“My master won’t have to complain, as many gentlemen do,” said Morris, “or as many gentlemen feel, if they don’t complain, that he is neglected for the sake of his baby.”
“If you enjoy your dinner to-day, love,” said Hester, “you must not give me the credit of it. You and I are to sit down to our pheasant together, they tell me. Margaret and Morris will have it that they have both dined.”
“There is little in getting a comfortable dinner ready,” said Morris, “whether it is the lady herself, or another, that looks to a trifle like that. It is the seeing his wife so full of care and thought about her baby as to have none to spare for him, that frets many an one who does not like to say anything about it. Fathers cannot be so taken with a very young baby as the mothers are, and it is mortifying to feel themselves neglected for a newcomer. I have often seen that, my dears; but I shall never see it here, I find.”
“I do not know how you should, Morris,” said Hester, in something of the old tone, which made her sister’s heart throb almost before it reached her ear. “Margaret will save me from any such danger. Margaret takes care that nobody shall be engrossed with the baby but herself. She has not a thought to spare for any of us while she has baby in her arms. The little fellow has cut us all out.”
Margaret quickly transferred the infant to her brother’s arm, and left the room. She thought it best; for her heart was very full, and she could not speak. She restrained her tears, and went into the kitchen to busy herself about the dinner she had cooked.
“’Tis a fine pheasant, indeed, Miss Margaret, my dear, and beautifully roasted, I am sure: and I hope you will go up and see them enjoy it. I am so sorry, my dear, for what I said just now. I merely spoke what came up in my mind when I felt pleased, and never thought of its bringing on any remark. Nor was anything intended, I am sure, that should make you look so sad: so do you go up, and take the baby again, when they sit down to dinner, as if nothing had been said. Do, my dear, if I may venture to say so. I will follow you with the dinner in a minute.”
“I wonder how it is, my love,” said Hope, in a voice which spoke all the tenderness of his heart; “I wonder how it is that you can endure wrong so nobly, and that you cannot bear the natural course of events. Tell me how it is, Hester, that you have sustained magnanimously all the injuries and misfortunes of many months, and that you now quarrel with Margaret’s affection for our child.”
“Ah why, indeed, Edward?” she replied, humbly. “Why, but that I am unworthy that such an one as Margaret should love me and my child.”
“Enough, enough. I only want to show you how I regard the case about this new love of Margaret’s. Do you not see how much happier she has been since this little fellow was born?”
“Oh, yes.”