Busy with these thoughts, he did not notice the ironical whistling coming from the pond.He tasted the night air with cheerful satisfaction."At any rate, to-morrow will be a fine day," he said.
The next day it rained.But Gissing was too busy to think about the weather.Every hour or so during the night he had gone into the spare room to listen attentively to the breathing of the puppies, to pull the blanket over them, and feel their noses.It seemed to him that they were perspiring a little, and he was worried lest they catch cold.His morning sleep (it had always been his comfortable habit to lie abed a trifle late) was interrupted about seven o'clock by a lively clamour across the hall.Thepuppies were awake, perfectly restored, and while they were too young to make their wants intelligible, they plainly expected some attention.He gave them a pair of old slippers to play with, and proceeded to his own toilet.
As he was bathing them, after breakfast, he tried to enlist Fuji's enthusiasm."Did you ever see such fat rascals?" he said."I wonder if we ought to trim their tails? How pink their stomachs are, and how pink and delightful between their toes! You hold these two while I dry the other.No, not that way! Hold them so you support their spines.A puppy's back is very delicate: you can't be too careful.We'll have to do things in a rough- and-ready way until Dr.Holt's book comes.After that we can be scientific."Fuji did not seem very keen.Presently, in spite of the rain, he was dispatched to the village department store to choose three small cribs and a multitude of safety pins."Plenty of safety pins is the idea," said Gissing."With enough safety pins handy, children are easy to manage."As soon as the puppies were bestowed on the porch, in the sunshine, for their morning nap, he telephoned to the local paperhanger.
"I want you" (he said) "to come up as soon as you can with some nice samples of nursery wallpaper.A lively Mother Goose pattern would do very well." He had already decided to change the spare room into a nursery.He telephoned the carpenter to make a gate for the top of the stairs.He was so busy that he did not even have time to think of his pipe, or the morning paper.At last, just before lunch, he found a breathing space.He sat down in the study to rest his legs, and looked for the Times.It was not in its usual place on his reading table.At that moment the puppies woke up, and he ran out to attend them.He would have been distressed if he had known that Fuji had the paper in the kitchen, and was studying the HELP WANTED columns.
