His face worked a
moment, painfully and then his head came down in her lap
that held the baby, and so she had them both for a moment,
one arm about the child, one hand smoothing the boy's close-
cropped hair. And in that moment she was more splendidly
maternal than either of the women who had borne these whom
she now comforted.
It was Fanny who attended to the hotel rooms, to the baby's
comfort, to the railroad tickets, to the ordering of the
meals. Theodore was like a stranger in a strange land. Not
only that, he seemed dazed.
"We'll have it out to-night," Fanny said to herself. "He'll
never get that look off his face until he has told it all.
I knew she was a beast."
She made him lie down while she attended to schedules,
tickets, berths. She was gone for two hours. When she
returned she found him looking amused, terrified and
helpless, all at once, while three men reporters and one
woman special writer bombarded him with questions. The
woman had brought a staff artist with her, and he was now
engaged in making a bungling sketch of Theodore's face, with
its ludicrous expression.
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