[_There is another fusillade from the radiator, reinforced by the reverberations from the nursery, where a regiment of artillery seem to have begun target practice._] _Mrs. E._ I _will_ go and get my baby! I know-- Oh, George, just hear it crash! Do get up and put the screen in front of it; that may turn off the pieces so they won't come this way. _Mr. E._ (_scornfully_) Pieces of what? Noise? _Mrs. E._ How can you make fun? If the engineer has gone to sleep, he's sure to blow up the whole hotel. I'm going to get up and dress myself, and take baby over to mother's! _Mr. E._ (_with calm but cutting irony_) At three o'clock in the morning? Shall you walk, or call a carriage? _Mrs. E._ (_beginning to sob in a dry and perfunctory fashion_) Oh, you are too cruel! You are perfectly heartless. I wonder you don't take that dear little innocent baby and hold him between you and the radiator for a shield. _Mr. E._ That might be a good scheme, my dear, only the little beggar would probably howl so that I haven't really the moral courage to wake him. [_The indignant reply of Mrs. Ellston is lost in the confused sound of the brays of a drove of brazen donkeys, which appear to be disporting themselves in the radiator. The noise of mighty rushing waters, the clanking of chains, the din of a political convention, the characteristic disturbances of a hundred factories and machine-shops, with the deafening whirr of all the elevated railways in the universe follow in turn._] _Mrs. E._ I _will_ go and get my baby, and I will _go_ to mother's; and, what is more, we will never, never come back! _Mr. E._ Oh, just as you please about going, my dear; only you know that if you desert my bed and board, the law gives the boy to me. _Mrs. E._ I don't _believe_ it's any such thing; and if it is, it is because men made the law. Women wouldn't take a baby away from its mother. _Mr. E._ Have what theories you choose, my dear; only please let me get a few crumbs of sleep, now the radiator has had the mercy to subside. _Mrs. E._ You are a brute, and I won't ever speak to you again! [_She firmly assumes a stony silence, and the radiator, after a few concluding ejaculations and metallic objurgations, also relapses into comparative stillness. Mr. Ellston's breathing begins to give strong indications that slumber has re-descended upon his weary frame._] _Mrs. E._ (_starting up with the inspiration of an entirely new and startling idea_) George! George! George! _Mr. E._ (_with less good humor than might be desired_) Eh? _Mrs. E._ Wasn't it wonderful for baby to sleep through it all? _Mr. E._ (_drowsily_) Yes; droll little beggar. His mother wasn't in the nursery to wake him, though. _Mrs. E._ You don't suppose there is anything the matter with him? George! George, I say! you don't suppose the reason he sleeps so soundly is because he's sick?