The background was the dining-room with the red curtains drawn, and a glowing log in the open fireplace; she put baby on the rug in his new pale blue frock with the short sleeves, and Larrie in the big easy chair with his feet on the fender and a pipe in his lips. And since in mental pictures the brush may depict thoughts, she drew him, thinking [p 86] ]anxiously of his income which the sudden depreciation in the value of property all over the colony was just now affecting greatly.
And then she was going to ask him to take her to the big concert at the Centennial Hall to show him the names on the programme in a careless way.
And his face was to grow first amazed, and then bright with pride and gladness, and the rest of the evening they were to spend in making plans for the brilliant future.
How delicious it was going to be! Her heart was throbbing with anticipation, her very blood seemed leaping in her veins.
But baby objected to be jumped up and down in the ecstatic little way she was treating him to; he gave vigorous signs of annoyance, so she sank into her low chair, and rocked soothingly. But she could not keep silent when he said with such wise, round eyes that he knew everything about everything, and was as pleased as herself.
‘Bab-bab,’ he began encouragingly, and hit at her with his dear little fists.
[p 87]
]And ‘He should be a little prince, he should,’ was her deliciously inconsequent answer, punctuated with kisses on his wee nose.
‘Bab-bab-bab’—he tried to walk excitedly up the front of her dress in a horizontal position, and then make gleeful clutches at her hair.
But the short little curls slipped through his fingers, and he kept tumbling back in her lap, a little heap of cuddlesome sweetness.
‘Little son, small little sweet, mamma’s boy bonnie,’ she whispered again and again and again, her face in his neck or on his soft thick hair. That was her way of telling him that all the rest of their lives was going to be a bright golden dream, a triumphal march through the world, over a carpet of rose leaves and under a canopy of the bluest sky ever stretched out.