-felt
like cradling his head in her weak arms, kissing him, crying over him a
little.

She wouldn't have been allowed to do that to the babies anyway. They
were going to be terribly well brought up, those twins; that was
apparent from the beginning. They had two nurses all to themselves,
quite apart from Miss Harris, who looked after Rose: one uncannily
infallible person, omniscient in baby lore--thoroughgoing, logical,
efficient, remorseless as a German staff officer; and a bright-eyed,
snub-nosed, smart little maid, for an assistant, who boiled bottles,
washed clothes, and, at certain stated hours, over a previously
determined route, at a given number of miles per hour, wheeled the twins
out, in a duplex perambulator, which Harriet had acquired as soon as the
need for it had become evident.

Miss Harris was to go away to another case at the end of the month. But
Mrs. Ruston (she was the staff officer) and Doris, the maid, were
destined, it appeared, to be as permanent as the babies. But Rose had
the germ of an idea of her own about that.

They got them named with very little difficulty. The boy was Rodney, of
course, after his father and grandfather before him. Rose was a little
afraid Rodney would want the girl named after her, and was relieved to
find he didn't. There'd never in the world be but one Rose for him, he
said. So Rose named the girl Portia.

They kept Rose in bed for three weeks; flat on her back as much as
possible, which was terribly irksome to her, since her strength and
vitality were coming back so fast. The irksomeness was added to by a
horrible harness largely of whalebone. Rose got the notion, too, that
the purpose of all this was not quite wholly hygienic. Harriet had said
once: "You know the most distinguished thing about you, Rose,
dear--about your looks, I mean--is that lovely boyish line of yours. It
will be a perfect crime if you let yourself spread out."

This wasn't the sort of consideration to make the inactivity any easier
to endure. She might have rebelled, had it not been for that germinant
idea of hers. It wouldn't do, she saw, in the light of that, to give
them any excuse for calling her unreasonable.

At the end of this purgatorial three weeks, she was carried to a chair
and allowed to sit up a little, and by the end of another, to walk
about--just a few steps at a time of course. One Sunday morning, Rodney
carried her up-stairs to the nursery to see her babies bathed. This w