"The ungrateful little heathen!"
"I'm afraid—I'm not a good mother." The sweet face quivered. "And I want to be that more than anything else on earth. You see if I can get him through—through this awful time when I can't tell just what might be the matter—it will be easy enough. But young babies are so—so—unreal. You don't know whether you've got them to keep or not. They seem to be kind of holding on to another life, while they clutch this. A good mother knows how to unloose them from that other hold."
Gaston was touched by the yearning in the low voice, but the weazened face of the child repelled him, even while it attracted him.
"Would it be so—so terrible if he did not let go that—other hold?"
It was a stupid thing to say, and Gaston despised himself for being so brutal when he saw the look of horror on the upturned face.
"Terrible?" Joyce gasped. "Why, if—if he should leave me, I couldn't live. You don't know how it seems to have him warm and little and soft against your heart. The whole world would be empty—empty, until it would kill me with the emptiness—and I'd always think, you know, he'd found out I wasn't fit to be his mother. It's a foolish fancy, but you know, Mr. Gaston, I think they come to try us mothers—if they find us out—not fit—they don't stay. Such a lot of babies don't stay!"
"Why Joyce!" Gaston tried to turn his gaze from that awful baby-stare. "Full of whim-whams and moonshine. You must get about more. You must come up to Drew's house to-morrow. It's a palace of a place—and Filmer had a letter from Drew to-day. He's coming before the autumn cold sets in—he's going to bring an aunt and a sister—just get your idle fancy on the doings, and let Master Malcolm jog along at his own pace. If he doesn't like you for a mother, he isn't worth considering. Look at him now—he sees the joke, the brazen little cuss, he's actually laughing in our faces."
"Oh!" Joyce sat rigidly up, and her own face became transformed. The moment she had lived and waited for had come! The blank stare gave place to a broken, crinkling expression; the thin shapeless lips trembled over the toothless gums, and into the big eyes a wonder broke. A light seemed to shine forth—and the baby smiled into the adoring face looking down!
To Gaston, the sight was, in a sense, awful. The majesty of Joyce's attitude toward the change in the child, was the only thing that saved the occasion.
"Is—it hungry?" he asked with the same dense stupidity he had displayed before.