THE STRANGE LIKENESS
CHAPTER I.ACT TWO, SCENE ONE.
Stagedramas are accustomed to begin with Act One, Scene One; but the little drama of living presented in this story starts with the second act. The fact that the first act was for so long unknown to some of thedramatis personaepermitted the mystery.
“Adoring, dear?”
A young gentleman entered the room as he spoke, smiling indulgently as he looked at his young wife, who bent over a white crib.
The young man was perhaps twenty-seven years of age, neat in his gray suit, with the blue tie that matched his eyes, and carrying himself with an air of poise and quiet assurance. Soft fair hair with a wave that curled itself over an intelligent brow, and good, firm features were points that were no drawbackto the gentleman’s attractive personality. Crossing the room, he put an arm around the slender figure of his wife and with her looked down at the sleeping baby.
“Do you blame, me, honey?” whispered the young woman, responding to the embrace and drawing away from the crib a little as she laid a soft finger on her husband’s lips. “Don’t wake her. Isn’t she like a lovely little rosebud? Just look at her adorable little mouth and that wee, dimpled hand and arm. Oh, I’m so glad that I have her!
“And what do you think of the nursery? Auntie’s taste is wonderful, you know, and she helped me. Why, Auntie is just crazy about the baby!”
“I see where I am going to be entirely left out in the cold,” the young man remarked, but he did not look worried over the situation.
“You will soon be as silly as I am,” laughed his wife. “Now promise me! You will never tell, will you?”
“I have hesitated to promise, dear, because I think that no good ever comes of not knowing the truth.”
“But what harm could it do? She is really ours, all tight and fast, and nobody to dispute it!”
“Certainly. But suppose she finds out some day.”
“She can’t, unless we tell her, and if you will promise,—”
Two arms went around the young man’s neck and a lovely face looked up at him. “Please, please,” she begged. “It isn’t as if there would be anything dreadful to find out.”
“No,—it’s just that I—well, I’m no proof against you, as you well know! All right. I promise. I will never tell her.”
“Nowyou have made me perfectly happy,—as you always do. This is the prettiest doll that I ever had to play with, and I’m going to bring her upvery carefully.”
“I see that she has my hair,” teasingly continued the young man, “what there is of it. What color are her eyes? I’ve never seen her awake but once and then she was howling and her eyes were screwed shut.”
“Her eyes are going to be exactly like mine. Auntie says that in all important features she is precisely like all the prettiest babies of our family!”
The two young people happily looked at each other and laughed, still softly; but the baby parted its long, dark lashes a little, turned its head, waved a tiny hand for a moment, and with a faint sigh put its thumb in its mouth, falling soundly asleep again as it did so.
Silently the two, who stood by the crib with its white blankets and dainty coverlid, waited to see ifthe child would waken. Then gently the young woman drew the baby hand away from the rosebud mouth. With a new dignity she said, “You have to do that whenever babies start to put their thumbs in their mouths.”
But this was back in the late autumn some seventeen years before the next recorded scene.