"Let her have her old baby," said Jimmy. "I don't want it."
"You don't want it?" snapped Zoie indignantly, "what have YOU got to do
with it?"
"Oh nothing, nothing," acquiesced Jimmy meekly, "I'm a mere detail."
"A lot you care what becomes of me," exclaimed Zoie reproachfully; then
she turned to Aggie with a decided nod. "Well, I want it," she asserted.
"But Zoie," protested Aggie in astonishment, "you can't mean to keep
BOTH of them?"
"I certainly DO," said Zoie.
"What?" cried Aggie and Jimmy in concert.
"Jimmy has presented Alfred with twins," continued Zoie testily, "and
now, he has to HAVE twins."
Jimmy's eyes were growing rounder and rounder.
"Do you know," continued Zoie, with a growing sense of indignation,
"what would happen to me if I told Alfred NOW that he WASN'T the father
of twins? He'd fly straight out of that door and I'd never see him
again."
Aggie admitted that Zoie was no doubt speaking the truth.
"Jimmy has awakened Alfred's paternal instinct for twins," declared
Zoie, with another emphatic nod of her head, "and now Jimmy must take
the consequences."
Jimmy tried to frame a few faint objections, but Zoie waved him aside,
with a positive air. "It's no use arguing. If it were only ONE, it
wouldn't be so bad, but to tell Alfred that he's lost twins, he couldn't
live through it."
"But Zoie," argued Aggie, "we can't have that mother hanging around down
stairs until that baby is an old man. She'll have us arrested, the next
thing."
"Why arrest US?" asked Zoie, with wide baby eyes. "WE didn't take it.
Old slow-poke took it." And she nodded toward the now utterly vanquished
Jimmy.
"That's right," murmured Jimmy, with a weak attempt at sarcasm, "don't
leave me out of anything good."
"It doesn't matter WHICH one she arrests," decided the practical Aggie.
"Well, it matters to me," objected Zoie.
"And to me too, if it's all the same to you," protested Jimmy.
"Whoever it is," continued Aggie, "the truth is bound to come out.
Alfred will have to know sooner or later, so we might as well make a
clean breast of it, first as last."
"That's the first sensible thing you've said in three months," declared
Jimmy with reviving hope.