Prev | Current Page 283 | Next

McCutcheon, George Barr, 1866-1928

"Mr. Bingle"

She whipped the
blankets off the bed. There was no baby. A second later she darted
through a door on the opposite side of the room, slamming it violently
behind her. Monsieur Rousseau started to laugh but cut it short and
sputtered Mon dieu three or four times in a choked voice.
"What does all this mean?" demanded Mr. Bingle. "God bless my soul!"
In the meantime, Madame Rousseau was confronting a motherly looking
person in Monsieur Rouquin's bath-room, down the little hall. The
motherly looking person was holding a fat, yellow-headed baby on her
lap and to the mouth of the fat, yellow-headed baby was attached the
business end of a half-emptied milk-bottle.
The conversation was in whispered French, and of exceeding bitterness
on one side. It is not necessary to repeat what was said. It is only
necessary to explain that the motherly looking person was the infant's
grandmother--in fact the mother of Madame Rousseau. From certain
disjointed explanatory scraps that fell from the motherly person's
lips it might have been divined that the baby awoke some time before
the arrival of the great philanthropist, and that grandmere deemed it
to be the part of wisdom to feed it thoroughly before submitting it
for inspection.


Pages:
271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295