“There, you fat little pudge, now hold still, and don’t keep on laughing like a clown.”
Geoffrey resumed his former position, and stared at the baby, and the baby stared at him.
“I suppose this is Geoffrey Trethick?” he said at last; “but if I had been coming along the cliff and saw myself I shouldn’t have known him. Well, it is a chance to study human life and its helplessness. I begin to see now why women like babies. They’re so soft, and helpless, and appealing. A baby is a something with which a woman can do just as she likes, for I suppose there is nothing a woman likes so much as having her own way.”
Here a spasm of mirth seemed to convulse the baby, which threw back its head and laughed, and babbled, and crowed.
“Oh, you agree with that opinion, do you, youngster? Well, that’s right. Hold still now. Do you hear? I don’t want to take you home to your mother in two pieces. I wonder whether a baby ever did wobble off its head?”
Here there was a pause, during which Geoffrey lay back with half-closed eyes, lazily watching his charge.
“Now of course you don’t know it, youngster, and it does not trouble you a bit, but you are one too many in this rolling world of ours. People talk about purity and innocence, and little things fresh from their Maker’s hands; but, as my friend Lee says, you’re a child of sin and shame: that’s what you are.”
“Do you hear?” he continued. “Why, you’re laughing at it, as hard as ever you can laugh. Oh, it’s funny, is it? Well, I suppose you are right, but it’s no joke for poor Madge.”
The baby laughed and crowed loudly here, ending by coughing till it was nearly black in the face.
“Serve you right too, you unnatural little wretch, laughing like that at your mother’s troubles. You’re a chip of the old block, and no mistake. I’ve a good mind to pitch you off the cliff into the sea. Oh, you’re not afraid, arn’t you?” he continued, with his face close to the baby, who wanted re-arranging after the coughquake from which it had suffered, with the result that the two little hands that had opened during the coughing clutched and tightened themselves in Geoffrey’s crisp beard, from which they refused to be torn.