The Real Adventure by Henry Kitchell Webster (pdf to ebook reader txt) 📕

with the same tender-patronage that Rose felt now for her mother? Would little Portia, some day, smile over her like that, and wonder whether she'd ever--really lived?

She did wish she could have a talk with Rodney.

The telephone switchboard in the lobby gave her an idea. It was five o'clock, now; seven in Chicago. He'd just be sitting down to dinner, all by himself, poor dear, most likely, and wishing for a talk with her. Well, why not?

She rather electrified the hotel office when she put in that call. The whole place wore an important air for the next half-hour. She went up to her room to wait for it, and before the line was put through she thought of something that would have prevented her doing it if she'd thought in time. He'd probably think something horrible had happened to one of them. So the moment she heard his voice--it was faint and far-away but clear enough that she could detect the straining urgency of it--she said:

"It's all right, Roddy. There isn't a thing the matter. Did I frighten you half to death?"

He said, "Thank God!" And then, "I don't suppose it was two minutes I waited for your voice, but it seemed a year. What is it?"

"I'm ashamed to tell you, after a scare like that. It's nothing, Roddy. Just to hear you say hello. It seems a pretty unjust sort of world, to-night, and I wanted to be reminded that you were in it. That's all."

She had to say it all over again before she could make him believe he'd heard her straight, and by that time she was feeling pretty foolish over the impulse she had yielded to. But just the sound of his good big laugh, when he understood, was worth it.

"You aren't running it, you know," he told her. "Leave the worry to the Authorities. I can't philosophize any better than that at twenty dollars a minute. I wish you were here."

"I wish so too," she said. "I will be next week."

When she had hung up the receiver, she had to squeeze the tears out of her eyes before she could see to do anything else. But it was with her own smile that she contemplated what she meant to do next. She went into the adjoining room, relegated Miss French to the side lines and undressed the twins herself.

The twins adored her and had the most ineffably delicious ways of showing it. But an added attraction for Rose resided in the fact that this incursion of hers always--just a little--annoyed Miss French. Clever as the nurse was about handling the twins, she could not manage even the pretense to that professional superiority which is the prerogative of nurses toward mothers. Rose, with those highly trained hands of hers, a twin in each of them, could exhibit a dazzling virtuosity that left Miss French nowhere.


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Publication Date: 09-16-2009

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