"Can't you come in and get your tea?" I asked as he handed me the baby and
helped his wife down.
"No: I must go over directly and compose matters. Good-bye, little woman:
by-bye, baby! Do you know, we think she's beginning to say 'papa?'" said
Wyn, proudly; and then he kissed his wife and child and drove away.
I carried the infant phenomenon into the house and took off its wrappings.
She was my namesake, and I loved the little creature, but I can't say she
was a pretty baby. She was a soft, brown thing, with her father's
beautiful southern eyes and her mother's mouth, but otherwise she
certainly was not handsome. She was ten months old, but she had a look of
experience and wisdom in her wee face that would have made her seem old at
twenty years. She sat on my lap and watched me in a meditative way, as
though she were reviewing her former estimate of my character, and
considering whether her opinions on that subject were well founded. There
was something quite weird and awful in her dignity and gravity.
"Isn't she a wise-looking little thing?" said Minny. "She makes me think
sometimes of the fairy changeling that was a hundred and fifty years old,
and never saw soap made in an egg-shell."
"This baby never would have made such a confession of ignorance, you may
depend.
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