oclaimed the doctor, "_twins_!" He repeated the monosyllable,
converting it into a clarion-call that made me think of a rooster
crowing.

"A lovely boy and girl," cooed the third nurse with a bottle of
olive-oil in her hand. And by twisting my head a little I was able to
see the two wire bassinets, side by side, each holding a little mound
of something wrapped in a flannelette blanket.

I shut my eyes, for I seemed to have a great deal to think over.
Twins! A boy and girl! Two little new lives in the world! Two warm and
cuddling little bairns to nest close against my mother-breast.

"I see _your_ troubles cut out for you," said the doctor as he rolled
down his shirt-sleeves.

They were all laughing again. But to me it didn't seem quite such a
laughing matter. I was thinking of my layette, and trying to count
over my supply of binders and slips and shirts and nighties and
wondering how I could out-Solomon Solomon and divide the little dotted
Swiss dress edged with the French Val lace of which I'd been so proud.
Then I fell to pondering over other problems, equally prodigious, so
that it was quite a long time before my mind had a chance to meander
on to Dinky-Dunk himself.

And when I did think of Dinky-Dunk I had to laugh. It seemed a joke on
him, in some way. He was the father of twins. Instead of one little
snoozer to carry on his name and perpetuate his race in the land, he
now had _two_. Fate, without consulting him, had flung him double
measure. No wonder, for the moment, those midnight toilers in that
white-walled house of pain were wearing the smile that refused to come
off! That's the way, I suppose, that all life ought to be welcomed
into this old world of ours. And now, I suddenly remembered, I could
speak of _my children_--and that means so much more than talking about
one's child. Now I was indeed a mother, a prairie mother with three
young chicks of her own to scratch for.

I forgot my anxieties and my months of waiting. I forgot those weeks
of long mute protest, of revolt against wily old Nature, who so
cleverly tricks us into the ways she has chosen. A glow of glory went
through my tired body--it was hysteria, I suppose, in the basic
meaning of the word--and I had to shut my eyes tight to keep the tears
from showing.

But that great wave of happiness which had washed up the shore of my
soul receded as it came. By the time I was transferred to the
rubber-wheeled stretcher they called "the Wagon" an