“Yes; he’s mine.”
There was proprietorship but no pride in the admission. It was Prudence’s hand which pulled the covering away from the tiny face.
“Oh!” she said, and half drew back, and then bent again compassionately over the ugly little mottled piece of humanity in the beautiful young mother’s arms. “I’ve never seen so young a baby before. What do you call him?”
“He isn’t christened,” the sullen voice responded. “I’ve no patience with those silly customs.”
“But,” began Prudence, and looked perplexed, “he’ll have to have a name of his own some time.”
“We call ’im William,” the young mother volunteered. “There’s no need for cold water splashing over that. If ’e don’t like ’is name later on, ’e can change it.”
Prudence, steering away from the subject, replaced the shawl over the little face and impulsively held out her arms.
“Let me carry him,” she said. “I’d love to; and you are tired. Where were you taking him?”
“To the farm yonder, among the trees. I get milk for ’im there. ’E’s been weaned these three weeks.”
The exchange from the girl-mother’s arms to the younger arms extended eagerly to receive their burden was effected silently. Prudence walked on proudly, bearing her unaccustomed charge with a sense of new responsibility suddenly acquired. She loved the feel of the little warm body against her heart; the nestling pressure of this soft helpless thing, which lay so confidingly within the shelter of her arms, roused in her the strong protective maternal instinct which is every woman’s heritage. In her pity for its puny helplessness she forgot the sense of shock which the first glimpse of the repellently ugly wrinkled face had occasioned her, forgot the circumstances of its unfortunate birth, and the more recent revelation that it had not been received into the Church, was not in any sense of the term a Christian; she realised only that she held in her arms that most wonderful of all things, a new generation; and felt in her heart the warm glow of protective love for this weak little morsel of humanity, born into an unwelcoming world—a love child who was denied love. The unfair conditions of the child’s birth awoke her utmost compassion. She felt resentful against its unknown father, against the injustice of the world’s judgment, which throws discredit on maternity rather than on illicit love. The greatest crime of this unwedded mother, Prudence recognised, lay in the fact that she had brought a child into the world.