“Well, probably he wanted to look at the ceiling, then,” defended the young mother, promptly. “I'm sure I wouldn't give a snap for a baby if he didn't sometimes have a mind of his own, and exercise it!”
“Oh, Billy, Billy,” laughed Aunt Hannah, with a shake of her head as Billy turned away, chin uptilted.
By the time Bertram, Jr., was three months old, Billy was unmistakably her old happy, merry self, strong and well. Affairs at the Strata once more were moving as by clockwork—only this time it was a baby's hand that set the clock, and that wound it, too.
Billy told her husband very earnestly that now they had entered upon a period of Enormous Responsibility. The Life, Character, and Destiny of a Human Soul was intrusted to their care, and they must be Wise, Faithful, and Efficient. They must be at once Proud and Humble at this their Great Opportunity. They must Observe, Learn, and Practice. First and foremost in their eyes must always be this wonderful Important Trust.
Bertram laughed at first very heartily at Billy's instructions, which, he declared, were so bristling with capitals that he could fairly see them drop from her lips. Then, when he found how really very much in earnest she was, and how hurt she was at his levity, he managed to pull his face into something like sobriety while she talked to him, though he did persist in dropping kisses on her cheeks, her chin, her finger-tips, her hair, and the little pink lobes of her ears—“just by way of punctuation” to her sentences, he said. And he told her that he wasn't really slighting her lips, only that they moved so fast he could not catch them. Whereat Billy pouted, and told him severely that he was a bad, naughty boy, and that he did not deserve to be the father of the dearest, most wonderful baby in the world.
“No, I know I don't,” beamed Bertram, with cheerful unrepentance; “but I am, just the same,” he finished triumphantly. And this time he contrived to find his wife's lips.
“Oh, Bertram,” sighed Billy, despairingly.
“You're an old dear, of course, and one just can't be cross with you; but you don't, you just don't realize your Immense Responsibility.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” maintained Bertram so seriously that even Billy herself almost believed him.
In spite of his assertions, however, it must be confessed that Bertram was much more inclined to regard the new member of his family as just his son rather than as an Important Trust; and there is little doubt that he liked to toss him in the air and hear his gleeful crows of delight, without any bother of Observing him at all. As to the Life and Character and Destiny intrusted to his care, it is to be feared that Bertram just plain gloried in his son, poked him in the ribs, and chuckled him under the chin whenever he pleased, and gave never so much as a thought to Character and Destiny. It is to be feared, too, that he was Proud without being Humble, and that the only Opportunity he really appreciated was the chance to show off his wife and baby to some less fortunate fellow-man.