As Tom could not gainsay this, he went off to do his morning’s work, and to get Joan’s breakfast. By the time he had done this the sun was rising, and the sky, away in the east, was a miracle of purple and rose. The night had been wild, but the storm having exhausted itself, the dawn was all the more beautiful.
The babe was still asleep, and had not moved all night, Joan said, and Tom fervently hoped it would not until it was safe out on the moor. But he hoped in vain, for when the sun began to wheel up behind the hills in the east, and sent a beam of rosy light in at the casement window, the little creature shuffled in the costan, and when Joan, willing to give it air, pushed back its covering of bracken, it opened its eyes and smiled, and that smile transformed its whole face.
‘Why, Tom, my man,’ she cried, ‘the little dear isn’t ugly one bit; an’ the little eyes of it are as soft as moor-pools! Do ’ee come and have a squint at it.’
Tom came, and when he had stared at the babe a minute or more, he said slowly, as if weighing his words:
‘You be right, Joan; but it do make the mystery all the more queer. A cheeld that can look as ugly as nettles one minute and as pretty as flowers the next ent for we to keep.’
‘Don’t ’ee betray thy ignorance where babes is concerned!’ cried Joan, fearful of what his words implied. ‘Some do look terrible plain in their sleep—as this poor dear did—and some do look beautiful. ’Tis as Nature made ‘em—bless their hearts!’
The babe now turned her eyes on Tom, and was gazing on him as if she wanted to look into his very soul, and then, as if she quite approved of what she saw there, gave him a fascinating smile, which won his heart at once.
‘You won’t take the cheeld out on the moors to-day, Tom, will ’ee?’ asked Joan, who was quick to see the change in her man’s face.
‘We will keep it till I come home from the bal, at any rate,’ he said cautiously. And then the babe, as if to show its gratitude for the concession, held up both its little arms to him to be taken out of its costan cradle, whereupon Tom was so delighted at being preferred before his wife that he could hardly conceal his pride.
‘That infant do knaw a thing or two, whatever it be,’ said Joan to herself, with a chuckle. ‘And ’tis a somebody, I can tell, by her little shift and things, which do look as if they was spun out of spiders’ webs by the Small People, so fine an’ silky they be!’