"What do you think of him?" Beatrix asked, while she smoothed down the wholly superfluous skirt and then, tilting the baby forward, straightened the frills on the back of his little yoke.
"Oh, he's not so bad as he might be," Bobby responded encouragingly, as he snapped his fingers in the face of the child who stared back at him impassively.
The mother's face flushed.
"What do you mean, Bobby?" she asked a little sharply.
Too late, Bobby saw his blunder. In his consternation, he blundered yet more.
"I had no idea he would be half so presentable a boy. Just the living image of Lorimer; isn't he?"
"You see it, too?"
Bobby was at a loss to interpret the sudden incisive note in her voice. No one had warned him that the baby's likeness to his father had been a forbidden subject, and he could not know that Beatrix, in brooding over the matter, had reached a point where she questioned whether the resemblance might not exist solely in her own imagination. Bobby's next words annulled that hope and confirmed her fears.
"He's as like him as two peas, cunning as he can be. There, boy, look at your Uncle Bobby!" Bobby bent forward and with his forefinger gently tilted the little face upward. "Lorimer's eyes to perfection," he observed. Then, as he met Beatrix's eyes, he suddenly understood their wild appeal. Dropping the baby's chin, he laid his hand on his cousin's shoulder. "I wouldn't worry about that, Beatrix," he added reassuringly. "He probably will take it out in looking, and, for his character, hark back to some remote Dane or other. Lorimer was a handsome fellow, and the baby might do worse than look like him. Otherwise, he may go off on a tangent. Suppose he should take after me, for instance!"
Bobby spoke cheerily, hoping that Beatrix's laugh would follow his words. Instead, she caught his hand with her disengaged one and pressed it fiercely to her cheek.