“I couldn't,” said Warble, simply, “it was on a tray.” “As I hoped--I mean, feared--” exclaimed Petticoat, tearing the envelope from the sheet, “he is dead!” It made Warble writhe to see the devastated envelope--she always slit them neatly with a paper-knife--but she was thrilled by Petticoat's excitement. “A fortune!” he exclaimed. “My revered ancestor, the oldest of the Cotton-Petticoats, has died and left all his wealth to me! A windfall! Now we can afford to have a baby and get over the Moorish Courtyard, too! Oh, Warble, ain't we got fun!” He danced about the room, in his blue burnous and red tarbush, looking more like a howling dervish than a tempestuous Petticoat. Warble thought a minute. A baby would be nice--and perhaps she could reform that more easily than she could older people. “All right,” she said, “and I'll have beautiful gaternity mowns of shuffy fliffon--I mean, fliffy shuffon, no--shiffy fluffon--oh, pleathe--pleathe--” Warble's tongue always misbehaved when she was excited or embarrassed, but Petticoat didn't notice her. “I can send Roscoe Rococo after that Courtyard,” he mused, “he'll know. The last man I sent to Spain for a casemented façade, brought home a temple! But Roscie knows, and he'll do it proper. I don't want to run over just now--” * * * * * The baby was coming. Warble reveled in infant layettes and her own layouts for lying in. She sank deeper and deeper in a sea of baby-clothes, down pillows and orris powder. Nursery quarters were added to the house, influenced by Lucca Delia Robbia and Fra Angelico. Also a few influential Madonnas. * * * * * The Butterflies came in with advice. Marigold Leathersham was dubious about the wisdom of the plan, but brought a pillow of antique rose point, filled with ostrich plumes. Mrs. Holm Boddy rushed over with a copy of _Poems Every Expectant Mother Ought to Know_, and Lotta Munn sent a card of diamond safety pins. Iva Payne, the hateful thing, sent a Cubist picture of an infant falling downstairs, but Warble couldn't make it out so its pre-natal influence didn't amount to much. Daisy Snow, innocent child, sent a beautiful edition of _How to Tell Your Young_, a treatise of the bird-and-bee-seed-and-pollen school, and Faith Loveman sent her own marked copy of _Cooks that Have Helped Me_. But Warble made a face at them all, and gave their books to the Salvation Army and read the Diary of Maggot Somebody. * * * * * Another fate slather. The baby was twins. That was the way things came to Warble--fate in big chunks--destiny in cloudbursts. Two little red Petticoats all at once to hang on the ancestral tree. But Warble was not caught napping. In her efficient way, she had provided two bassinets, two nurseries--in fact, she had really provided three of everything, but the third wasn't needed, and she thriftily ordered it put aside for the present and for the future.