They walked on in silence, and Ned tried to forget that his wife was a Catholic. Her religion did not prevent her from wearing a white dress and a hat with roses in it.
"Shall I go up-stairs to see the baby, or will you bring him down?"
"I'll bring him down."
And it was a great lump of white flesh with blue eyes and a little red down on its head that she carried in her arms.
"And now, Ned, forget the priest and admire your boy."
"He seems a beautiful boy, so healthy and sleepy."
"I took him out of his bed, but he never cries. Nurse said she never heard of a baby that did not cry. Do you know I'm sometimes tempted to pinch him to see if he can cry."
She sat absorbed looking at the baby; and she was so beautiful and so intensely real at that moment that Ned began to forget that she had given the child out to nurse because the priest had told her that she might do so without sin.
"I called him after you, Ned. It was Father Stafford who baptised him."
"So he has been baptised!"