High Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

like he was a lighted firecracker! He won’t bite you!’
    Miss Tinkham collapsed into a sitting posture in the nearest chair. She clutched the baby to her breast and he squalled in protest.
    ‘Now, now, baby! Now, now! Be a nice little boy!’ Miss Tinkham admonished without much conviction.
    Mrs. Rasmussen had his brother changed, so she came over and sat near Miss Tinkham, who was rocking tentatively with her charge.
    Mrs. Feeley strode over and ordered:
    ‘Give him to me! You go fish them bottles outa the hot water. They’d oughta be warm by this time!’
    Miss Tinkham handed the baby over with ill-concealed relief.
    ‘There! My laddie-buck!’ Mrs. Feeley cried, jouncing the baby violently on her knee. ‘Mrs. Feeley’s gotcha now!’
    ‘That’s okay before they eats—but not after,’ Mrs. Rasmussen warned.
    Miss Tinkham came back, holding the two bottles gingerly. Mrs. Rasmussen took one and squirted a drop on her wrist with a knowing air.
    ‘Speck too hot,’ she said. ‘Be all right in a minute!’
    The twins, at the sight of the bottles, had tuned up and were roaring their rage, fortissimo, at these women who tantalized them so cruelly.
    Mrs. Rasmussen could stand the din no longer. She nodded to Mrs. Feeley to begin feeding her baby and they began.
    ‘Gawd,’ Mrs. Feeley said, ‘you can feel the suction while this bucko’s got his mouth six inches away from the bottle!’
    ‘Ain’t they pigs?’ Mrs. Rasmussen agreed, screwing up her face in distaste at the smacking and gurgling that came out of the twins. The babies were certainly en rapport, for at each down-beat at the finish of each huge slurp of fluid, the boys emitted a happy sigh—in unison.
    ‘I’d ’a’ swore they was hollow to their heels,’ Mrs. Feeley whispered. She made room for the other baby on her capacious lap while Mrs. Rasmussen straightened up the bedding in the carriage for their post-prandial nap. She laid the babies down gently, taking care to put them smack on their tummies and to turn their heads so they could breathe freely.
    Miss Tinkham hovered in the background watching wistfully. Mrs. Feeley said she guessed it was time for their ten-o’clock bottle and went to get it. Mrs. Rasmussen said all that guttin’ had made her hungry and went to spread up some rye bread with her home-made liverwurst to go with the beer. Miss Tinkham stood by the baby-carriage a long time. The twins were sleeping the sleep of the just by the big front window. The shadows of the gardenia bushes played over their heads; she wondered if she should draw the blackout curtain, but decided that the leaves cut the glare just enough—and besides they looked so pretty. She leaned down and planted a moist kiss on the top of each cherubic head, then went happily to join her friends at the table, singing softly, ‘The Sleep That Flits on Babies’ Eyes’ to a tune that not even John Alden Carpenter would have recognized.
    The infants slept all through lunch. Old Timer came in to wash up, tiptoed over to see the new paying-guests, and went out to round up scraps to build a pair of kiddie-cars. The way those boys ate and slept, they would be needing action in a few weeks.
    At two o’clock the slumbering afternoon was shattered by the hunger cries of the lusty babes. Mrs. Feeley remarked that they could just as well throw away the alarm clock. The feeding and changing routine was performed exactly as it had been at ten o’clock. When the twins were bedded down once more, Mrs. Rasmussen went ahead with her preparations for supper. Mrs. Feeley went into the garden to weed, and Miss Tinkham sat down to restring some beads. Each was occupied with her own thoughts. At five they congregated in the rockers to discuss the events of the day.
    The radio was playing softly, Miss Tinkham had filled the bowls with fresh flowers, and the odor of Mrs. Rasmussen’s incomparable cooking filled the air. The ladies rocked gently in time to the music.
    Finally Mrs.