This singing of hers had an unfavourable effect upon Laurence. For a few minutes after they started he smoked his twig with a little satisfaction and had a slight enjoyment in the thought that he was the head of a family—but something within him kept objecting to the game; he found that really he did not like it. He bore it better on the second and fourth blocks, for Elsie was the mother then, but he felt a strong repulsion when Daisy assumed that relation. He intensely disliked being the father when she was the mother, and he was reluctant to have anybody see him serving in that capacity. Daisy’s motherhood was aggressive; she sang louder and louder, and even without the singing the procession attracted a great deal of attention from pedestrians. Laurence felt that Daisy’s music was in bad taste, especially as she had not yet pulled up her stocking.
She made up the tune, as well as the words, of her lullaby; the tune held beauty for no known ears except her own and these were the words:
“Oh, my da-ar-luh-un baby,
My-y lit-tull baby!
Go to sleep! Go to slee-heep!
Oh, my dear lit-tull baby!
My baby, my dar-luh-un bay-bee,
My bay-bee, my bay-hay-bee!”
As she thus soothed the infant, who naturally slumbered not, with Daisy’s shrill voice so near, some people on the opposite side of the street looked across and laughed; and this caused a blush of mortification to spread over the face of the father.
“Listen!” he remonstrated. “You don’t haf to make all that noise.”