Horatia, as white as her dressing-gown, was sitting with her back to the door, looking into the fire, her hands folded before her.
"Would he like to go to his pretty mamma? and he shall then," said Martha, laying down the bundle in Horatia's lap. Horatia started, but with the child already on her knee it was impossible to resist.
"Now, Miss Horatia, just put your hand under his little head and hold him a moment for me while I poke the fire. He wouldn't cry, no, he wouldn't, Mother's poppet," she went on, as the infant showed signs of weeping.
Horatia put her hand under his head as she was told, and awkwardly tried to make a lap for the tiny creature, who decided at last that his puckerings should end in a smile. The fire needed a great deal of making up, and as soon as Mrs. Kemblet had finished she found that there were handkerchiefs which that careless Joséphine had not yet put away. Horatia appeared afraid to move, while Maurice clutched wildly at his own thumbs, and seemed for the moment content with his rapid change of quarters.
"Martha," came at last the languid voice, "do you think he is my baby at all?"
"Why, Miss Horatia, how can you talk so! Whose else should he be, and his forehead like his Reverence's own? Pick him up and cuddle him, my lady; he might be a poor orphan, not so much as seeing his own mother."
But Maurice at this point, probably feeling himself an orphan, began to cry. In an instant the wily Martha had slipped out of the room, and closed the door behind her.
"My heart was thumping fit to burst," she afterwards wrote to Polly. "But the precious did not cry for long." And indeed, when, a quarter of an hour later, she cautiously opened the door, Horatia was bending over the child in her lap. She half turned, and raised a warning finger. Maurice was fast asleep.
CHAPTER XIV
(1)