Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/158

156 the nurse's brawny arm, now lifted up its voice again, and Teresa cried:

"For heaven's sake, Basil, shut the doors! If that creature cries any more, I shall go mad!"

But it was time for the baby to be fed, and the nurse remorselessly brought it in. Teresa sulkily turned on her side and stretched out her arm to receive it. But when the baby, with whimpering eagerness and frantic clutches of its fingers, had settled to the breast, she looked down on it and smiled half unwillingly.

"How cuddly it is! So soft and warm! If only it wouldn't howl so—I wouldn't mind so much if it were always like this."

At the change in her voice Basil raised his head.

"Poor little thing, it's because it's hungry, or has the colic—I should think you'd be sorry for it," he said reproachfully.

Teresa lifted the baby's wrinkled red hands and listened to the small sound of sensuous content which it made in feeding.

"He sings just like a kettle—or an asthmatic kitten," she said, looking amused.

Basil's tired face, showing deep lines of nervous and physical strain, changed, too, as he looked at the picture of Teresa and the baby—her profile, with the long braid across the cheek, her ivory-white gleaming shoulders and breast, her dark lashes drooping as she gazed at the