It seems that Marty, prepared by her first ablution for this life, and as she lay being powdered on Mrs. Jones's motherly lap, was of a different type to her predecessors—much whiter, and lighter, and slighter; and she made no exhibition of that lusty lung‑power which had so characterized the other little Barties on their introduction to this vale of tears.
Her face was more regularly formed and more highly finished, and in a few weeks grew of a beauty so solemn and pathetic that it would sometimes make Mrs. Jones, who had lost babies of her own, shed motherly tears merely to look at her.
Even I felt sentimental about the child; and as for Barty, he could talk of nothing else, and made those rough and hasty silver‑point studies of her head and face—mere sketches—which, being full of obvious faults, became so quickly famous among æsthetic and exclusive people who had long given up Barty as a writer on account of his scandalous popularity.
Alas! even those silver‑points have become popular now, and their photogravures are in the shop‑windows of sea‑side resorts and in the back parlors of the lower middle‑class; so that the æsthetic exclusives who are up to date have had to give up Barty altogether. No one is sacred in those days—not even Shakespeare and Michael Angelo.
We shall be hearing Schumann and Wagner on the piano‑organ, and "nous autres" of the cultured classes will have to fall back on Balfe and Byron and Landseer.
In a few months little Marty became famous for this extra beauty all over Henley and Maidenhead.
She soon grew to be the idol of her father's heart, and her mother's, and Ida's. But I really think that if there was one person who idolized her more than all the rest, it was I, Bob Maurice.
She was extremely delicate, and gave us much anxiety and many alarms, and Dr. Knight was a very constant visitor at Marsfield Lodge. It was fortunate, for her sake, that the Josselins had left Campden Hill and made their home in Marsfield.
Nine of these children—including one not yet born then—developed there into the finest and completest human beings, take them for all in all, that I have ever known; nine—a good number!
"Numero Deus impare gaudet."