ax and to show
some resemblance to their natural selves, when their features were again
simultaneously frozen by a ring at the outside door.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Annoyed at being interrupted in the midst of his lullaby, to three,
Alfred looked up to see Maggie, hatless and out of breath, bursting into
the room, and destroying what was to him an ideally tranquil home scene.
But Maggie paid no heed to Alfred's look of inquiry. She made directly
for the side of Zoie's bed.

"If you plaze, mum," she panted, looking down at Zoie, and wringing her
hands.

"What is it?" asked Aggie, who had now reached the side of the bed.

"'Scuse me for comin' right in"--Maggie was breathing hard--"but me
mother sint me to tell you that me father is jus afther comin' home from
work, and he's fightin' mad about the babies, mum."

"Sh! Sh!" cautioned Aggie and Zoie, as they glanced nervously toward
Alfred who was rising from his place beside the cradle with increasing
interest in Maggie's conversation.

"Babies?" he repeated, "your father is mad about babies?"

"It's all right, dear," interrupted Zoie nervously; "you see," she
went on to explain, pointing toward the trembling Maggie, "this is our
washerwoman's little girl. Our washerwoman has had twins, too, and it
made the wash late, and her husband is angry about it."

"Oh," said Alfred, with a comprehensive nod, but Maggie was not to be so
easily disposed of.

"If you please, mum," she objected, "it ain't about the wash. It's about
our baby girls."

"Girls?" exclaimed Zoie involuntarily.

"Girls?" repeated Alfred, drawing himself up in the fond conviction that
all his heirs were boys, "No wonder your pa's angry. I'd be angry too.
Come now," he said to Maggie, patting the child on the shoulder and
regarding her indulgently, "you go straight home and tell your father
that what HE needs is BOYS."

"Well, of course, sir," answered the bewildered Maggie, thinking that
Alfred meant to reflect upon the gender of the offspring donated by her
parents, "if you ain't afther likin' girls, me mother sint the money
back," and with that she began to feel for the pocket in her red flannel
petticoat.

"The money?" repeated Alfred, in a puzzled way, "what money?"

It was again Zoie's time to think quickly.

"The money for the wash, dear," she explained.

"Nonsense!" retorted Alfred, positively beaming generosity, "who talks
of money at such a time as this?" And taking a ten dollar bill