If she tried to squeeze in beside the baby, she’d undoubtedly awaken it. But she was so tired! Then her eye lit on the empty crib beside the bed. Well, why not?
Penny turned off the light and climbed into the crib. Very sleepy, she curled up like a foetus. One arm crooked around a Teddy Bear which had been left in the crib. Her thumb went into her mouth, and soon the innocent young virgin was fast asleep, a childish smile dimpling her doll-like face.
Thus she slept, deeply, unseeing, unhearing, innocently uncaring. Thus she slept, her delicate, shell-like ears deaf to the footsteps entering the apartment, entering the bedroom. Thus she slept, her eyes closed to the eyes staring at her curled up in the crib, closed to the man’s tongue licking his lips as he stared. Thus Penny slept on, her breathing even, a counterpoint to the increasing harshness of the breathing of the man who was watching her.
It was only as the man moved over to the infant on the bed that Penny awoke. Some maternal instinct snatched her from sleep in response to the possibility of a threat to the baby. “Who are you? What do you want?” She shot bolt upright in the crib.
“Sure, an’ I’m Humphrey Humphrey,” the man replied calmly. “ ’Tis brother I am to the woman what lives here. An’ who might you be?” His brogue, together with the shock of red hair sticking up from his head, said he was as Irish as Paddy’s cow.
“Oh.” Penny relaxed. “I’m a friend of Scarlett’s.”
“An’ what might you be doin’ in the crib like that?”
“I’m tired and I didn’t want to disturb the baby, so—”
“I see. An’ where might me sister be?”
Penny explained that there had been an accident without going into the details of it. “So I’m watching the baby until Scarlett gets back from the hospital,” she finished.
“Ahh yes, the baby.” He leaned over the bed and studied the infant. “Well-named she is. Bonnie. So they called her, and so she is.” He crooked a finger and tickled the infant. .
“Careful, you’ll wake her.”
“Sure an’ she’s awake already. Smilin’ for her Uncle Humphrey, too. Ahh, what a darlin’ little nymphet she is."
“Nymphet? Isn’t she a little young—”
“Ohh, but ’tis her youth I’m admirin’. So innocent an’ so sexy at one an’ same time. Stirs a man’s blood, it does. Kitchy-kitchy-koo!” Humphrey Humphrey poked a finger inside the baby’s diaper and Bonnie gurgled delightedly.
“I don’t think you should—”
“Nonsense! She loves it! ” Humphrey moved his fingers knowingly. “Look at the smile on her. You little temptress you! Bouncy-bouncy, that’s the way! Oh, so sexy!”
“Now just a minute!” Penny started to remonstrate further, but she was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. She went into the living room to answer 1t.
It was Scarlett. “I’m going to have to spend the night here,” she told Penny. “Rhett insists.”
“Why does he insist?”
“Oh, I know it sounds silly, but he’s afraid of a switch because of what happened when the baby was born.”
“What do you mean? What happened when the baby was born?”
“Oh, you know, all those stories about how babies get switched in the hospital.”
“You mean your baby was switched with another one?”
“Oh, no. Rhett doesn’t think the babies were switched. He just insists they switched wives on him.”
“Well, did they?”
“I’m not sure,” Scarlett admitted. “That twilight sleep is pretty potent. I just don’t remember.”
“I see,” said Penny, not really seeing at all.
“Anyway, the thing is that Rhett’s afraid if I’m not at his bedside, they might switch husbands on me. So I have to stay. By the way,” she added, “did my brother get there?”
“Yes. He’s here. As a matter of fact, Scarlett, he’s the reason I wish you’d come home.”
“Why? What’s happening? ”
“Well, I don’t know how to tell you. But he’s — he’s playing with the baby.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that? He’s her uncle. Why shouldn’t he play with her?”
“I mean he’s playing with her. He’s playing with her — with her you-know-what.”
“She hasn’t got a you-know-what,” Scarlett pointed out.
“Umm.” Momentarily Penny was hung up on the euphemism. “Well, he’s playing with her wherever you-know-what would be if she had a you-know-what,” she explained confusedly.
“Don’t let that worry you,” Scarlett said cheerfully. “All infants are masturbatory anyway. Erotic play is good_ for them. Keeps them from developing neurotic repressions.”
“But,” Penny whispered, “he keeps calling her his little nymphet.”
“Humphrey always was a bit—odd. But don’t let it worry you. He’s harmless. I’ve got to go now, honey. I’ll see you in the morning.” Scarlett hung up.
Penny returned to the bedroom. Humphrey Humphrey was supporting the baby on his outstretched palm now and bouncing it up and down violently. There was a faraway look in his eyes. “Ahh, me little darlin’,” he crooned, “me lovely nymph, me own Lolita.”
“He name is Bonnie,” Penny pointed out.
“I know. I know. But ’tis an old love she reminds me of for sure.” He inserted his hand inside the diaper once again. “Ouch!” He withdrew it hastily. There was and open safety pin sticking out of the knuckles. “So ’tis scratchin’ me ye are, me passionate plaything,” he said, extracting the pin and sucking at the blood.
“You’d better put her down and let me put something on that for you,” Penny suggested.
“Oh, all right,” he agreed reluctantly.
When Penny had doctored the scratch with a little iodine, she guided him into the living room. She sank down on the couch, determined to keep Humphrey Humphrey away from the baby. “Sit down.” She patted the cushions beside her invitingly. “And tell me all about Ireland.”
“Ahh, ’tis the Emerald Isle.” He sank down beside her. “ ’Tis a little bit o’ heaven fell from out the sky one day.” There was a faraway look of longing and nostalgia in his eyes. “ ’Tis the land me mother came from.”
“Why did you leave there?”
“ ’Tis a rainy, cold and barren land. Never nothin’ to ait but potatoes. A poorly land indaid is Mother Erin. An’ anyhow, I had to laive. The bloody English was after me for fair. ’Tis lucky I am to be alive to tell it.” He crossed himself.
“Were you mixed up in the rebellion? I thought that was all over.”
“ ’Twill never be over!‘ Never!” he shouted, the fire of a furious patriotism in his eyes. “Never so long as one heathen Protestant Englishman stands on fair Erin’s soil. We’ll fight to the death, we will! We’ll drive them out, every last one! Down with the British! Down with partition! Up the Irish!”
“Up the Irish!” Penny echoed, herself carried away by his ardor. “Up the Irish!”
“Damn to all Orangemen! Down with the traitors! Up the Irish!”
“Up the Irish!” Penny looked at him breathlessly. What a man! Yes, what a man he was with his muscles bulging and his red hair flaming in the lamplight and his eyes shooting fire. She forgot completely about the incident in the bedroom now. She forgot that she had only lured Humphrey Humphrey out here to keep him from taking advantage of the infant. She forgot the infant altogether. All she knew was that she was here, alone, with this man, and that his vibrant zeal was making her respond to him as a woman responds to a man. The darling girl’s heart beat quickly -- pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat—and her body tingled with the warmth filling it. “Up the Irish!” she said again, and her lips were very close to his. “Up the Irish!” and she closed her eyes.