Billy laughed ruefully.
“Well, every other question I ask Eliza, she says: 'Why, I don't know; you have to use your judgment.' Just as if I had any judgment about how much salt to use, or what dish to take! Dear me, Aunt Hannah, the man that will grow judgment and can it as you would a mess of peas, has got his fortune made!”
“What an absurd child you are, Billy,” laughed Aunt Hannah. “I used to tell Marie—By the way, how is Marie? Have you seen her lately?”
“Oh, yes, I saw her yesterday,” twinkled Billy. “She had a book of wall-paper samples spread over the back of a chair, two bunches of samples of different colored damasks on the table before her, a 'Young Mother's Guide' propped open in another chair, and a pair of baby's socks in her lap with a roll each of pink, and white, and blue ribbon. She spent most of the time, after I had helped her choose the ribbon, in asking me if I thought she ought to let the baby cry and bother Cyril, or stop its crying and hurt the baby, because her 'Mother's Guide' says a certain amount of crying is needed to develop a baby's lungs.”
Aunt Hannah laughed, but she frowned, too.
“The idea! I guess Cyril can stand proper crying—and laughing, too—from his own child!” she said then, crisply.
“Oh, but Marie is afraid he can't,” smiled Billy. “And that's the trouble. She says that's the only thing that worries her—Cyril.”
“Nonsense!” ejaculated Aunt Hannah.
“Oh, but it isn't nonsense to Marie,” retorted Billy. “You should see the preparations she's made and the precautions she's taken. Actually, when I saw those baby's socks in her lap, I didn't know but she was going to put rubber heels on them! They've built the new house with deadening felt in all the walls, and Marie's planned the nursery and Cyril's den at opposite ends of the house; and she says she shall keep the baby there all the time—the nursery, I mean, not the den. She says she's going to teach it to be a quiet baby and hate noise. She says she thinks she can do it, too.”
“Humph!” sniffed Aunt Hannah, scornfully.