"Kiss you, my dear, why——" Bindle was seized with a sudden huskiness in his voice, as he leaned forward gingerly and kissed the warm red lips held out to him.
"Is that It?" he asked, looking down with troubled eyes at Millie's burden.
"This is Little Joe," she said softly, the wonder-light of motherhood in her eyes, as she placed one foot on the rail of a chair to support her precious burden, thus releasing her right hand to lift the veil from a red and puckered face, out of which gazed a pair of filmy blue eyes.
"Ooooooosssss." Instinctively Bindle drew a deep breath as he bent a few inches forward.
For fully a minute he stood absorbing all there was to be seen of Joseph the Second.
"'E ain't very big, is 'e?" he enquired, raising his eyes to Millie's.
"He's only six weeks old," snapped Mrs. Bindle, who had followed Millie into the kitchen and now stood, with ill-concealed impatience, whilst Bindle was gazing at the infant. "What did you expect?" she demanded.
"Don't 'e look 'ot?" said Bindle at length, his forehead seamed with anxiety.
"Hot, Uncle Joe?" enquired Millie, unable to keep from her voice a tinge of the displeasure of a mother who hears her offspring criticised.
"I mean 'e don't look strong," he added hastily, conscious that he had said the wrong thing.