A Little Baby
‘I WON’T have no lump of a child,’ said Judith tremulously.
‘An’ I won’t have no squallin’ baby,’ retorted her husband. He spoke with the air of a man goaded by the unreasonableness of one he was willing to indulge to almost any limit. ‘A child three or four year old, now. Surely that ’ud be young enough for you, an’ no trouble to what a reel young ’un ’ud be, an’ good comp’ny for you all day. Not but that I think a kid ten or eleven year old ’ud be best to adopt. But I ’m willin’ to take one three or four, if yer that dead set on havin’ a young ’un.’ There was a pleading note in his voice.
Judith’s was sullen as she answered, ‘I won’t have no child three or four years, any more than one ten or eleven.’
Mason grew more nearly angry with Judith than he had ever been in his life before.
‘I won’t have no kid a couple o’ months old,’ he cried. ‘ I don’t want one at all, but if you do, I’m willin’ to take one. But it’ll have to be one three or four year old. I won’t have no young babies, an’ that’s flat.’
In the newspaper he had been reading there was an advertisement offering for adoption a little girl four years old. After reading it aloud, Mason had cut out the address to which inquiry was to be made, remarking as he did so, ‘I’ll call there when I’m in town on Saturday. A lump of a child like that is what we’re lookin’ for.’
And Judith had cried with tremulous defiance, ‘I won’t have no lump of a child.’
Presently she left the kitchen and went into the bedroom leading off it. She was trembling as she sat on the edge of the bed in the darkness. She had been entirely submissive toward her husband during all their married life. She had had no will apart from his. Now to find herself opposed to him was bewildering, even terrifying, to her. She knew that he looked upon her as a helpless being, incapable of judging for herself, requiring thought to be taken for her in every relation of life. Judith had accepted this estimate of herself without resentment. It seemed to her an entirely natural attitude. Her husband practically managed the household. He bought all Judith’s clothes as well as his own, and his preference ruled in the choice of the former as of the latter. Judith never expressed dissatisfaction with what he purchased for her. He spent probably twice as much on anything he bought for her as she would have spent. The price was to him a guarantee that what he bought was much more desirable than the cheaper something which perhaps Judith had expressed a preference for. His desire was always to please his wife. He was essentially a good husband, but he took his own way of pleasing her, not hers. Nothing in his knowledge of Judith had prepared him for the tenacity with which she clung to her idea that the child they proposed to adopt should not be more than a couple of months old at the most.
In not having children, Mason had never felt any loss, and until Judith had fallen sick, he did not know that she had felt any. A young doctor, lately settled in the neighborhood, had been called in to attend her. After prescribing medicine, he said to James Mason at the door, ‘ She has never had any children?’
‘No,’ the husband said, adding, ‘an’ a good thing, too. She ain’t never been what you’d call a reel strong woman.’
‘But she might have been a happier one if she had,’ the young doctor rejoined.
James Mason looked after the retreating figure of the doctor in vague perplexity. The idea that Judith was not entirely happy and satisfied was a new one to him.
A day or so later, their nearest neighbor, the hurried mother of a large family, who ran over when she could spare a minute, to do what she could for Judith, said something that seemed a corroboration of the doctor’s opinion.
‘I think it’s just mopin’ here alone all day that’s the matter with her. Sometimes it seems as if I’ll be drove distracted with the noise of my six. But when I come over here, it’s that quiet, I just want to get back to the noise again. I could n’t stand the quiet and bein’ alone all day. As ye ain’t likely to ha’ none o’ yer own now, I’d think you an’ her ’ud be thinkin’ of adoptin’ a child. Have ye ever thought of adoptin’?’
‘I ain’t never thought of it, an’ I’m sure Judith ain’t,’ Mason said emphatically. ‘Other folks’ children ain’t much in my line, or in hers either, I guess.’
‘Other folks’ children is all right when wimmen can’t ha’ none o’ their own,’ rejoined the woman. ‘An’ if it was n’t for nothin’ but not bein’ alone when ye get old, I’d think ye’d be wantin’ to ’dopt one. She’d be a lot sight happier havin’ some one to look after, and be comp’ny for her.’
James Mason pondered over his pipe for a long time after the woman had gone, and then went into the room where Judith lay.
‘ Sally Forsyth’s been talkin’ ’bout us ’doptin’ a kid. I ain’t never thought of it. But, I guess, there ain’t nothin’ to prevent it, if you wanted one,’ he said doubtfully.
Judith raised herself on her elbow. ‘If I wanted one,’ she said. Rapture and hunger were on her face.
‘Why, I never knowed you cared for kids that much,’ Mason cried, in vexed perplexity that a desire so vital as Judith’s face showed this to be should have been kept from him. ‘We could ha’ ’dopted one long ago, if ye’d only said so.’
‘I did n’t think so much ’bout adoptin’. I wanted one o’ me own. An’ when I did think of it, I did n’t know whether you’d ha’ been willin’.’
‘I’d ha’ been willin’ enough if I knew that you wanted it. But how was I to know when you never said a word? An’ you never was one to take up much with kids, kissin’ them an’ all that.’ He looked at Judith with sudden suspicion, as if he found it hard to believe in the existence of so strong a desire without some outward manifestation of it.
Judith lay back on her pillow. It was true that she had never manifested any particular delight in the children that came across her path. She was even diffident with them. Mason himself was on easier terms with children than she. But from her window she would watch them for hours, until she knew every trick and charm of childhood by heart, tricks and charms to be brooded over in her solitary days. The child she had never had would have had all those diverting little ways and more. Because of her very hunger for a child of her own, she could not easily caress the children of happier women.
‘Well, there ain’t anything to hinder us from gettin’ one right away,’ Mason said after watching his wife for a while. ‘There’s always lots for adoption. Twelve year old ’ud be about the right age, I guess. One that old ’ud be nice comp’ny for you, and able to help you some, too. Would you fancy a boy or a girl?’
Judith raised herself on her elbow again. Her eyes were very bright. ‘I don’t care whether it’s a boy or a girl. But I don’t want one twelve year old. I don’t want one any age at all. I mean, I want a little, little baby — a baby just born.’
‘A baby just born,’ Mason almost shouted. ‘Yer crazy. What would you do with a kid that young, an’ you sick half the time. You don’t know what yer talkin’ about.’
That was the beginning of the trouble. From twelve years, Mason came down by successive degrees to three or four, but a child younger than that he declared he would not have.
‘If you won’t let me have the kind I want, I don’t see what you want to be always talkin’ about it. I don’t want one three or four years old; you say you don’t want one at all. Then ha’ done talkin’ about it. Things ’ll be just the same as they always was,’ Judith exclaimed one day, when at breakfast Mason had again broached the subject.
‘But I know now that you want one, an’ I did n’t then. Ain’t I always tried to get you what you wanted?' the man demanded in genuine grief and wrath.
‘I ain’t ever wanted anything bad that you ever got me,’ Judith flung back at him. ‘I guess, if I’d wanted anything reel bad, I would n’t ha’ got it.’
‘ An’ you that sick last night that you could n’t get my supper. Supposin’ ye’d had a kid to ’tend to? Yer clean crazy.’
‘ I would n’t be sick then.’ Judith’s voice was piteous.
‘I don’t see that that ’ud keep you from bein’ sick,’ Mason said, rising from the table. ‘Ye’d likely be sicker than ever. A kid’s a lot more trouble than you think. You don’t know when yer well off.’
Judith watched him out of the house with a dull resentment in her heart. She thought that she would not have his supper ready for him to-night either. It had not been sickness so much as some strange new feeling that was growing in her heart against him that had kept her from having his supper ready the night before. Yet, as she watched the plodding figure going down the road to the adjacent market-garden where he worked, a sudden sense of the futility of such warfare on her part came to her. Some men might show impatience or resentment coming home to an unlit fire and an uncooked meal. Mason never showed either. He had lit the fire and cooked the supper and waited on his wife solicitously; and he would do the same to-night and every night, uncomplainingly, patiently, if she chose to carry on the warfare, accepting without question and with sympathy her plea of sickness.
But, this willingness to acknowledge his good qualities did not soften Judith toward him. His question, ‘Ain’t I always tried to get you what you wanted?’ had not been without a certain pathos. Judith had recognized the pathos. She knew why he could n’t let the matter drop, and allow things to go on as they had been before. Knowing now her desire, he could not be content while it was ungratified. Ready to credit him with a desire for her happiness, willing to admit that his refusal to agree to the adoption of a very young child arose from apprehension of trouble for her, yet all his good qualities were in danger of becoming as naught in Judith’s eyes, because of his inability to understand that the trouble and pains of motherhood go to make up its joys. In her heart was a sense of growing estrangement from him, deepening at times to a feeling she could not name, but of which she was afraid. He was a stranger to her, in that he was incapable of understanding or sympathizing with her deepest feelings.
For Judith would not forego one jot or tittle of all that went with motherhood. She was avid of all its experiences, pain as well as joy. A child so young even as three years could do little things for itself, help itself in some degree, be to a certain extent independent. Judith wanted the utter helplessness and futility of earliest infancy. To take a child three years old would be to cut short by that many years the chapter of life that was the sweetest. Judith would not cut it short by one moment. At best it was too short. The little helpless baby grew so quickly into a romping child, and the romping child into sturdy boy or girl, and the boy or girl into man or woman. Doubtless, there was happiness and satisfaction in every stage of parenthood, but to Judith no after-happiness could compare with the days of clinging helplessness and utter dependence of little children.
When Mason was out of sight, she went into the bedroom. From a drawer she took out a long parcel carefully wrapped in a sheet. Within the sheet there was a further wrapping of tissue paper, as if the contents were very precious. Judith sat down on the edge of the bed, the parcel on her lap. The look on her face was reverent. The parcel held a variety of little garments, some yellowed as if they had been there a long time, some fresh as if just from the needle. That was Judith’s life — that part of her to which her husband was a stranger. Those tiny garments had not been prepared in the expectation of a child. Very shortly after her marriage, Judith had known she would never have a child. But her yearning must have some outlet, some expression. And in the surreptitious fashioning of those tiny garments, it had found expression. Her hands hovered over them now, smoothing, folding, straightening.
In saving the money to procure the material and in the procuring of the material, there was a certain element of excitement which Judith found pleasurable. It required some strategy to evade the constant care of her husband. The material was of the finest that self-denial on Judith’s part had been able to procure, but the workmanship was crude. Judith was as little skilled with her needle as she was in other womanly craft. Stitches were long and clumsy, and seams were not always straight; but in the making of them Judith had found much joy. The long hours when she was alone, which Sally Forsyth deplored, were not always unhappy ones for Judith. The door locked, safe from interruption, lawn and lace about her, Judith was transported to another world, a world in which the hours slipped byunheeded. Oftentimes, lawn and lace had to be hastily thrust into the nearest hidingplace at the click of the gate announcing her husband’s return from his work. If Mason had been given to voicing his impression of his wife’s manner at such times, he would have described it as ‘dazy.’ But he never did so voice it. Her dazedness and his unprepared supper were accepted with the patience with which he accepted all Judith’s incapacities.
But to-day the going over of those tiny garments did not bring any joy to Judith. She could not shut out realities; could not conjure up the child for whom those garments had been fashioned. At times as her needle went, in and out, that child had seemed to become actual flesh and blood. Her imagination had gone beyond the making of the garments to the putting them on the child. With what gentleness must the soft body be handled, little arms inserted into sleeves, tiny, tiny feet, that she could hide in her hand, covered with socks. Judith, childless, had not been without some of the happiness of motherhood.
But now as she sat there folding and unfolding the little clumsily-made garments, she remembered suddenly that not since the subject of adoption had been broached had she experienced that secret joy that had in some measure been compensation for her childlessness. She had not been able to evoke a form to fill those little garments, as she so long had done. It had been but a counterfeit of happiness at best, but never expecting to have the real happiness, Judith had made it suffice. Then had come the suggestion of adoption, and in the prospect of the real the counterfeit had been swept away, and swept away forever, Judith felt. The little dresses were empty and would remain empty. She would never feel again in her hands round, soft little limbs; little soft, soft crushable hands and feet to be touched so gently.
And with the conviction, the vague, nameless feeling that had been in her heart towards her husband, took on definiteness, became a resentment so fierce as for the moment to be almost hate. He had done this. She might have cherished her counterfeit to the end, getting the most out of it that she could. If there had been many, many hours in which she could not pretend, there also had been many in which the pretense had seemed real. Now all the hours would be desolate. She could never pretend again. For to have a child whose first years of life had not been with her, would be worse than having no child at all. Deep-rooted as her instinct was for the utter helplessness of the tiny infant, there would be joy, too, in growth and strength. But Judith wanted to see each leaf unfold, to gloat over dawning intelligence, to receive the first conscious smile and touch. Only then, she felt, could she be truly mother to one not of her own flesh.
That night Mason came home again to a disordered house and an unprepared supper. Judith did not plead sickness. He assumed it for her.
‘You ain’t been well, then, to-day, either,’ he said; then, as moved less by his forbearance than by some remote sense of duty she owed to this man, her husband, Judith began to set about preparation for supper, he added, ‘You sit quiet. I’ll get what I want to eat. I ain’t very hungry, anyway.’
After supper, Mason lit his pipe and went out and leaned over the gate to smoke. He had not eaten with any appetite, and now he smoked without any enjoyment. With not the faintest conception of what was in Judith’s heart against him, he yet felt something which caused him a vague uneasiness. ‘She ain’t happy,’ he said to himself as he leaned over the gate. Her unhappiness came as a reproach to him. He searched his mind for an instance of anything on his part that could have caused her unhappiness, but could find none.
‘’Cept it’s not givin’ in to her ’bout the kid. But what could she do with a kid so young as she wants? I guess I know what’s best for her.’
Presently, he left the gate and strolled down the road in the direction of Sally Forsyth’s cottage. A swarm of children played noisily about the door. The mother, hot and tired-looking, sat on the porch,, a sleeping child in her lap. Mason sat down beside her.
‘How’s Judith?’ she asked.
‘She ain’t no better. That is — I don’t think she’s sick — not sick like she was a while ago. She’s just—’ He did not finish, but sat looking before him.
‘You remember what you said ’bout adoptin’?’ he said after a while. ‘Me an’ Judith talked about it. She’d like one, but she wants a young ’un — younger than that.’ He touched the six-months-old child in her lap. ‘Babies that young ain’t no good for comp’ny, an’ they’re an awful trouble, an’ she could n’t look after one, bein’ sick so much, but she’s that set on havin’ a young ’un. I want her to take one three or four year, but she won’t; an’ she ain’t happy,’ he concluded miserably.
The mother pressed the little head more closely against her breast.
‘Young babies is a lot o’ trouble,’ she admitted. ‘What with havin’ to be up at night and teethin’ later on, an’ one thing an’ another. I guess Judith don’t know anything about the trouble they’d be. I’d think one three or four year old ’ud suit her best.’
‘That’s what I say,’ Mason exclaimed eagerly. ‘One like yer little Katie, now. There was a advertisement in the paper the other night, a little girl four year old. I was thinkin’ o’ callin’ at the place to-morrow when I’m in town.’
Sally Forsyth nodded concurrence.
He added slowly, ‘Judith never found fau’t with nothin’ I ever done before, an’ if she was suitable — the little girl — I was thinkin’ I’d just bring her along ’thout any more to-do. I guess she’d like it all right? She’s alius been easy to please an’ to get on with. You think it ’ud be better than havin’ a reel young baby?’ he questioned anxiously.
‘I’d think so,’ Sally Forsyth said. ‘A young baby ’ud be a awful trouble to Judith. ’T ain’t as if she ever had none of her own. Babies take a awful lot o’ lookin’ after an’ doin’ for. I’d think it ’ud be far better to have one three or four year old.’
On his way home, presently, fortified by the opinion of one whom he looked upon as an authority on such matters, Mason made his resolution. He knew what was best for Judith better than she herself could. He would call to-morrow at the address given in the advertisement and see the child. If she were not suitable, some other child could be procured. He would end the situation, and end it in the best possible way for Judith. He recalled occasions when he had been commissioned by Judith to procure something in town — a dress, a hat, style and color specified. If anything of a different style or color had seemed to him handsomer or richer, he had never hesitated to disregard the instructions. And Judith had never complained. As he told Sally Forsyth, she had always been pleased with anything he had ever done before. Once this thing was accomplished, she would be as peaceable as she had always been. He should have done it before.
Just before he blew out the light that night, preparatory to getting into bed, he said to Judith in as casual a tone as he could command, ‘I’m goin’ to see that little girl that was advertised for adoption to-morrow. If she don’t suit, I’ll look ’round for another that age.’
Judith made no answer, and Mason got into bed and was soon asleep.
But Judith could not sleep. She had reached the point where she could no longer resist. Her heart was hot within her. She got as far from him as the limits of the bed would allow. She thought that the feeling surging in her heart against him must be hate. Presently, when the late moon shining through the uncurtained window fell on his face, she raised herself on her elbow and looked at him. Judith had been in love with Mason when she married him. For a long time she had not been sure whether he cared for her or not. She remembered that time of hope and fear now, as she leaned on her elbow watching his face. And it seemed unbelievable that she was the same person as the girl who had been transported when he had declared himself; unbelievable that he could ever have inspired that rapturous joy in her.
‘Girls don’t know,’she said to herself. ‘They think if they’re in love with a man an’ he marries them, they ’ll never want anything else. Oh, they don’t know.’
For her longing for a child had been of an intensity compared to which the girl’s longing for her lover had been as nothing. And now she would never know again even the vicarious joy that had at last come in some measure to satisfy her. He had decreed that. She would find no joy in the child he forced upon her; whose helplessness had not been her care. She flattened herself against the wall, shrinking from any contact with him, and she, too, thought of the dresses and hats she had desired and had never had, because they had not seemed desirable to him. Such trivial things she had let go without murmur or complaint; she had thought none the worse of him in those instances for substituting his desires and tastes for hers; but this she could not forgive.
When the moonlight had faded and it was time for him to get up, as he did abnormally early on the mornings he went to market, she turned her face to the wall and lay very still. He never required her to rise to get him off, however early he had to start, and for perhaps the first time in her married life she appreciated this; not in acknowledgment of any merit in his so doing, but because it saved her from speech with him. As she heard him, heavy with sleep, move clumsily about, she quivered in every nerve, lest, after all, he should come in and rouse her. She felt that she could not bear to speak to him or look at him. Yet, she knew things would have to continue as they always had been; that he would probably see no difference in her; but for this once, she let repugnance have full sway. When finally, she heard him close the door with an elaborate carefulness, she drew a long breath of relief.
It was always late when James Mason came home on market-days, deadtired and ready for bed. To-night he reached home about his usual hour, but the heaviness of fatigue that always sat upon him was absent. As he sat down to the supper which Judith had ready for him, he said, ‘Well, I saw her, an’ she’s a little daisy. I said I’d take her. The papers ’ll be ready to sign on Saturday, an’ I’ll bring her out then.’
Judith sat as if turned to stone.
‘ You’ll like her, Judith,’ went on Mason pleadingly. ‘I ain’t no great hand for kids, as you know, but I declare I’m fond o’ her already; a lovin’ little thing, with her little soft hands on my cheek when she kissed me. Purty, too, like a picture. An’ comes o’ respectable folks. Father an’ mother killed in a accident. You’ll like her, Judith? You ’ll be good to her? ’ he said in sudden anxiety for the happiness of the little child who had won him.
‘I guess I ain’t one to be bad to a poor little orphan child,’ Judith said slowly, ‘an’ I guess I’ll get to like her, all right. But,’ she got up and came close to him, ‘James Mason, you won’t never know what you ’ve done. P’raps, bein’ a man, you ain’t to blame for not understandin’ why it was I wanted as young a baby as I could get, but understandin’ or no, you might ’a’ let me have what I wanted.’
His look was uneasy. ‘Aw, a little baby! What’s the good of a little baby, that don’t know nothin’; would n’t even know you? D’ye think any one could take to a little baby like I took to this little girl? ’Tain’t in reason that any one could like a baby so well. When the people told her I was goin’ to be her father, she put her little soft hands on my cheek and kissed me, an’ called me father. A baby could n’t do nothin’ like that. An’ a baby ’ud grow, anyhow, so what dif’rence does it make? When you see her, you’ll be glad that I did n’t get no little baby.’
Voice and look pleaded with her, but Judith’s face remained hard. When she began to clear away the dishes, he offered to do it, alleging that he felt wonderfully fresh. Heretofore, Judith had always been willing to let him take such tasks upon himself even after a hard day’s work; but now she declined. In this moment of infinite separation from her husband, she recognized, as she had never recognized before, her shortcomings as wife and housekeeper; and her movements as she cleared away had a briskness and quickness about them that was evidently puzzling to Mason as he sat and watched her. Judith’s mind, going over all the many things in which as housekeeper she had been remiss, realized his patience and forbearance with her manifold shortcomings with an almost startling vividness. Few men would have been so patient, would have taken on themselves the duties that quite plainly belonged to the wife. But hereafter she would do her part to the best of her ability. There was no longer anything between them that would justify her acceptance of more than she gave.
And in the few following days, Mason was made more materially comfortable than he had ever been made before. In the morning Judith rose to get his breakfast, against his protest. Supper was ready on the table when he came home at night. None of the household tasks, so prone to be left for him, were now left. But Mason was not comfortable. His state of mind toward Judith was conciliatory. He would fain have taken upon himself all the household tasks, waited upon her hand and foot, as the only means of conciliation he knew. But Judith in her newfound competency baffled as well as bewildered him. She gave him no opening for conciliation.
On the morning that be was to go to town, wakened by the alarm that he had set at his usual hour, he heard from the kitchen the rattle of dishes. Judith was not beside him. Getting out of bed, he went to the door that opened to the kitchen. It was so early that although it was summer a lamp was lighted; but the table was spread, and Judith, bending over the stove, was frying meat. She turned at some sound he made.
‘ Yer up. I was thinkin’ o’ callin’ you,’ she remarked.
‘There was no call for you to rise,’ Mason said. ‘I could ’a’ got a bite for mysel’, same as I’ve allus done.’
‘A bite would n’t be much good with that long drive ahead o’ you,’ Judith said as casually as if for years he had not taken the long drive on what he had been able to pick up for himself. ‘Better hurry. Everything’s ready,’ she advised.
Mason did not enjoy his substantial breakfast. Judith, sitting opposite him, looked small and thin and tired, and her smallness and thinness and tiredness reproached him.
‘The idea o’ gettin’ up at this time o’ the morning,’ he muttered. ‘Ye’d best go to bed again, soon’s I ’ve gone.’ He swallowed a great gulp of tea, and looked away from Judith. ‘Ye’ll have to stay up for me to-night. I’ll be bringin’ her home, an’ she’ll be wantin’ some lookin’ after, I guess. Best take all the rest you can in the day,’
When he was gone and Judith had put the house in order, she went to the secret place, and took out the little garments. She would have to find a place yet more secret for them; a place that even she herself could not have access to. When it was dark, she would go out in the garden and dig a grave and bury them. Burial, following upon death and loss, would be a fitting disposition of them. Judith felt that something within her had died; that the spiritual happiness which the fashioning and contemplation of those little garments had brought to her would never be hers again. She must put out of sight the things that had stood for that dead happiness.
She sat on the floor, with the little garments spread out around her. Some of them doubtless would fit the little girl her husband was bringing home to her. Preparation had been made for the growth and development of the child of her imaginings. But Judith had no thought of putting these apart. She could as little bear to see this real child wear anything that had been made for that visionary child, as a mother could bear to see another dressed in the garments of her dead child. Sitting on the floor, she sorted and folded the little garments for the last time, one moment with feverish quickness as if eager to get her task done, the next lingeringly, unfolding what she had folded, to smooth out each crease and straighten each fold. And she knew what mothers suffer when they fold up and put away the clothes of their little dead children.
She did not expect her husband home before his usual time. When it grew dark, she took the bundle she had made to the bottom of the garden. On her way back to the house for a spade, she heard Mason call her loudly, ‘Judith, Judith!’ He had returned earlier than usual. Judith stood motionless outside the kitchen door. He called again, and she heard his steps receding as he went to the unused front room to look for her. As she stood out there in the darkness, breathing quickly, Judith thought again of the time when Mason had been her undeclared lover, and again she was swept with an incredulous wonder that he had ever been able to evoke in her emotions of joy. When he came back to the kitchen she stepped inside.
The lighted kitchen, after the darkness outside, dazed her. She could not see for a moment or two.
‘I didn’t think you’d be home so soon; I was down in the garden,’ she said. Then she looked about her. ‘Did n’t you — did n’t you bring her?’
A bundle lay upon the table, and Mason began to unwrap it.
‘I didn’t bring her, but I brought this.’ He threw back the shawl, — ‘I could n’t find a littler ’un,’ he grinned.
The child wrapped up in the shawl was very little, not more than a week or two old apparently. Judith, speechless, bent over it, and inserted a finger in the little curled-up fist. Immediately the tiny fingers closed upon it. Countless times in imagination had Judith felt her finger thus held, but imagination had never brought the ecstasy that flooded her whole being at the touch of actual baby fingers upon hers. Still speechless, she raised her eyes to where Mason stood, and they widened with sudden wonder. For the glamour of the days of courtship had fallen upon him again, and as he stood there watching her, with an expression half shamefaced, half anxious, he seemed in all things as he had seemed then — the man desirable, the man to make her happy. She smiled at him as long ago she had smiled at her lover; and Mason smiled back in relief.
‘ I could n’t get a littler ’un,’ he repeated.