“You have children, have you not?”
Both of them had.
“Ah,” she cried, clasping those slender hands, “but you are very fortunate! Your little ones,—what are their ages?”
They told her, she listening smilingly.
“And you nurse your little babes—you nurse them at the breast?”
The modest women blushed. They were not used to speaking with such freedom. But they confessed they did, not liking artificial means.
“No,” said the lady, looking at them with a soft light in her eyes, “as you say, there is nothing like the good mother Nature. The little ones God sends should lie at the breast. 'Tis not the milk alone that they imbibe; it is the breath of life,-it is the human magnetism, the power,-how shall I say? Happy the mother who has a little babe to hold!”
They wanted to ask a question, but they dared not—wanted to ask a hundred questions. But back of the gentleness was a hauteur, and they were still.
“Tell me,” she said, breaking her reverie, “of what your husbands do. Are they carpenters? Do they build houses for men, like the blessed Jesus? Or are they tillers of the soil? Do they bring fruits out of this bountiful valley?”
They answered, with a reservation of approval. “The blessed Jesus!” It sounded like popery.