Page:The Return of the Soldier (Van Druten).djvu/105

 Here’s his Noah’s Ark and his bricks, and his picture-books. Lions and tigers. Did he love wild beasts? Did he have these in his bath? All these ducks and swans and frogs and everything? I’d love to have seen him in his bath.

[She arranges the toys on the floor, playing with them tenderly.

And the woolly animals they’re loves.

[She snuggles a teddy-bear against her cheek.

Does it squeak?

[She pinches it; it grunts.

Did you hear it? Did he love that? Oh, the toys he had! His nurse didn’t let him have them all at once, did she? Oh! They’re lovely. She couldn’t burn them all she couldn’t! (She begins to cry.) I thought perhaps my baby had left me because I had so little to give him. But if a baby could leave all this!

[She cries wretchedly, rocking herself over the toys, which she fingers lovingly and lingeringly her words coming through her tears, half-unconsciously, as though in spite of herself.

Oh, I want a child I want a child. Poor dear Chris it’s all gone so wrong  everthingeverything [sic]. They each had only half a life. Oh Chris Dick  my baby.