The Judgment of Eve | Page 8

a week. They had no further need of her, those two sublime young egoists, fused by their fervors into one egoist, sublimer still. Mrs. Purcell was a sad hinderance to the intellectual life, and they were glad when she was gone.
Heavens, how they kept it up! All through the winter evenings, when they were not going to lectures, they were reading Browning aloud to each other. For pure love of it, for its own sake, they said. But did Aggie tire on that high way, she kept it up for Arthur's sake; did Arthur flag, he kept it up for hers.
Then, in the spring, there came a time when Aggie couldn't go to lectures any more. Arthur went, and brought her back the gist of them, lest she should feel herself utterly cut off. The intellectual life had, even for him, become something of a struggle. But, tired as he sometimes was, she made him go, sending, as it were, her knight into the battle.
"Because now," she said, "we shall have to keep it up more than ever. For them, you know."

V
"'I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea, And it was full of pretty things for Baby and for me.'"
Aggie always sang that song the same way. When she sang "for Baby" she gave the baby a little squeeze that made him laugh; when she sang "for me" she gave Arthur a little look that made him smile.
"'There were raisins in the cabin, sugared kisses in the hold.'"
Here the baby was kissed crescendo, prestissimo, till he laughed more than ever.
"'The sails were made of silver and the masts were made of gold. The captain was a duck, and he cried--'"
"Quack, quack!" said Arthur. It was Daddy's part in the great play, and it made the baby nearly choke with laughter.
[Illustration: "'Quack, quack!' said Arthur, and it made the baby nearly choke with laughter"]
Arthur was on the floor, in a posture of solemn adoration somewhat out of keeping with his utterances.
"Oh, Baby!" cried Aggie, "what times we'll have when Daddy's ship comes home!"
The intellectual life had lapsed; but only for a period. Not for a moment could they contemplate its entire extinction. It was to be resumed with imperishable energy later on; they had pledged themselves to that. Meanwhile they had got beyond the stage when Aggie would call to her husband a dozen times a day:
"Oh, Arthur, look! If you poke him in the cheek like that, he'll smile."
And Arthur would poke him in the cheek, very gently, and say: "Why, I never! What a rum little beggar he is! He's got some tremendous joke against us, you bet."
And a dialogue like this would follow: "Oh, Arthur, look, look, look, at his little feet!"
"I say--do you think you ought to squeeze him like that?"
"Oh, he doesn't mind. He likes it. Doesn't he? My beauty--my bird!"
"He'll have blue eyes, Aggie."
"No, they'll change; they always do. And his nose is just like yours."
"I only wish I had his head of hair."
It was a terrible day for Arthur when the baby's head of hair began to come off, till Aggie told him it always did that, and it would grow again.
To-day they were celebrating the first birthday of the little son. At supper that night a solemn thought came to Aggie.
"Oh, Arthur, only think. On Arty's birthday" (they had been practising calling him "Arty" for the last fortnight) "he won't be a baby any more."
"Never mind; Arty's little sister will be having her first birthday very soon after."
Aggie blushed for pure joy, and smiled. She hadn't thought of that. But how sad it would be for poor baby not to be the baby any more!
Arthur gave an anxious glance at Aggie in her evening blouse. His mind was not set so high but what he liked to see his pretty wife wearing pretty gowns. And some of the money that was to have gone to the buying of books had passed over to the gay drapers of Camden Town and Holloway.
"You know what it means, dear? We shall have to live more carefully."
"Oh yes, of course I know that."
"Do you mind?"
"Mind?" She didn't know what he was talking about, but she gave a sad, foreboding glance at the well-appointed supper-table, where coffee and mutton-chops had succeeded cocoa. For Arthur had had a rise of salary that year; and if Aggie had a weakness, it was that she loved to get him plenty of nice, nourishing things to eat.
"We sha'n't be able to have quite so many nice things for supper. Shall you mind?"
"Of course I sha'n't. Do you take me for a pig?" said Arthur, gayly. He hadn't thought of it in that light. Wasn't he always saying that it was the immaterial that mattered? But it had just come over