j-just downstairs--somewhere."

"I'll LOOK j-just downstairs somewhere," decided Alfred, and he snatched
up his hat and started toward the door.

"Alfred!" cried Zoie in alarm.

Coming back to her bedside to reassure her, Alfred was caught in a
frantic embrace. "I'll be back in a minute, dear," he said, but Zoie
clung to him and pleaded desperately.

"You aren't going to leave me the very first thing?"

Alfred hesitated. He had no wish to be cruel to Zoie, but the thought of
Jimmy out in the street with his baby at this hour of the night was not
to be borne.

Zoie renewed her efforts at persuasion. "Now, dearie," she said, "I
wish you'd go get shaved and wash up a bit. I don't wish baby to see you
looking so horrid."

"Yes, do, Alfred," insisted Aggie. "He's sure to be here in a minute."

"My boy won't care HOW his father looks," declared Alfred proudly, and
Zoie told Aggie afterward that his chest had momentarily expanded three
inches.

"But _I_ care," persisted Zoie. "First impressions are so important."

"Now, Zoie," cautioned Aggie, as she crossed toward the bed with
affected solicitude. "You mustn't excite yourself."

Zoie was quick to understand the suggested change in her tactics, and
again she sank back on her pillows apparently ill and faint.

Utterly vanquished by the dire result of his apparently inhuman
thoughtlessness, Alfred glanced at Aggie, uncertain as to how to repair
the injury.

Aggie beckoned to him to come away from the bed.

"Let her have her own way," she whispered with a significant glance
toward Zoie.

Alfred nodded understandingly and put a finger to his lips to signify
that he would henceforth speak in hushed tones, then he tiptoed back to
the bed and gently stroked the curls from Zoie's troubled forehead.

"There now, dear," he whispered, "lie still and rest and I'll go shave
and wash up a bit."

Zoie sighed her acquiescence.

"Mind," he whispered to Aggie, "you are to call me the moment my boy
comes," and then he slipped quietly into the bedroom.

No sooner had Alfred crossed the threshold, than Zoie sat up in bed and
called in a sharp whisper to Aggie, "What's keeping them?" she asked.

"I can't imagine," answered Aggie, also in whisper.

"If I had Jimmy here," declared Zoie vindictively, "I'd wring his little
fat neck," and slipping her little pink toes from beneath the covers,
she was about to get out of bed, when Aggie, who was facing Alfred's
bedroom door, ga