red and puckered little faces. Then he handed them over with all
too apparent relief, and fell into a brown study.

"What are you worrying over?" I asked him.

"I'm wondering how in the world you'll ever manage," he solemnly
acknowledged. I was able to laugh, though it took an effort.

"For every little foot God sends a little shoe," I told him,
remembering the aphorism of my old Irish nurse. "And the sooner you
get me home, Dinky-Dunk, the happier I'll be. For I'm tired of this
place and the smell of the formalin and ether and I'm nearly worried
to death about Dinkie. And in all the wide world, O Kaikobad, there's
no place like one's own home!"

Dinky-Dunk didn't answer me, but I thought he looked a little wan and
limp as he sat down in one of the stiff-backed chairs. I inspected him
with a calmer and clearer eye.

"Was that sleeper too hot last night?" I asked, remembering what a bad
night could do to a big man.

"I don't seem to sleep on a train the way I used to," he said, but his
eye evaded mine. And I suspected something.

"Dinky-Dunk," I demanded, "did you have a berth last night?"

He flushed up rather guiltily. He even seemed to resent my questioning
him. But I insisted on an answer.

"No, I sat up," he finally confessed.

"Why?" I demanded.

And still again his eye tried to evade mine.

"We're a bit short of ready cash." He tried to say it indifferently,
but the effort was a failure.

"Then why didn't you tell me that before?" I asked, sitting up and
spurning the back-rest.

"You had worries enough of your own," proclaimed my weary-eyed lord
and master. It gave me a squeezy feeling about the heart to see him
looking so much like an unkempt and overworked and altogether
neglected husband. And there I'd been lying in the lap of luxury, with
quick-footed ladies in uniform to answer my bell and fly at my
bidding.

"But I've a right, Dunkie, to know your worries, and stand my share of
'em," I promptly told him. "And that's why I want to get out of this
smelly old hole and back to my home again. I may be the mother of
twins, and only too often reminded that I'm one of the Mammalia, but
I'm still your cave-mate and life-partner, and I don't think children
ought to come between a man and wife. I don't intend to allow _my_
children to do anything like that."

I said it quite bravely, but there was a little cloud of doubt
drifting across the sky of my heart. Marriage is so different from
what the