He observed, too, that his child reacted on the woman: she had never sung in the house before; now she sang ravishingly—sang, in low, mellow, yet sonorous notes, some ditties that had lulled mediaeval barons in their cradles.
And what had made her vocal made her beautiful at times.
Before, she had appeared to him a handsome girl, with the hardish look of the lower classes; but now, when she sat in a sunny window, and lowered her black lashes on her nursling, with the mixed and delicious smile of an exuberant nurse relieving and relieved, she was soft, poetical, sculptorial, maternal, womanly.
This species of contemplation, though half philosophical, half paternal, and quite innocent, gave Lady Bassett some severe pangs.
She hid them, however; only she bided her time, and then suggested the propriety of weaning baby.
But Mrs. Gosport got Sir Charles's ear, and told him what magnificent children they reared in her village by not weaning infants till they were eighteen months old or so.
By this means, and by crying to Lady Bassett, and representing her desolate condition with a husband at sea, she obtained a reprieve, coupled, however, with a good-humored assurance from Sir Charles that she was the greatest baby of the two.
When the inevitable hour approached that was to dethrone her she took to reading the papers, and one day she read of a disastrous wreck, the Carbrea Castle—only seven saved out of a crew of twenty-three. She read the details carefully, and two days afterward she received a letter written by a shipmate of Mr. Gosport's, in a handwriting not very unlike her own, relating the sad wreck of the Carbrea Castle, and the loss of several good sailors, James Gosport for one.
Then the house was filled with the wailing and weeping of the bereaved widow; and at last came consolers and raised doubts; but then somebody remembered to have seen the loss of that very ship in the paper. The paper was found, and the fatal truth was at once established.
Upon this Mr. Bassett was weaned as quickly as possible, and the widow clothed in black at Lady Bassett's expense, and everything in reason done to pet her and console her.