“Davie what?”
“Ah! and how old are you?”
“I’se nearly four,” replied Davie, adding in a burst of new confidence, “when I come to my fourf birfday, mummy says she’ll gi’ me a penny every week all to mythelf.”
“Really?” said the painter, with a sad smile. “A whole penny?”
Davie shook his head in vehement affirmation: “Yeth, and I am thinkin’ what I shall buy mummy wi’ my firth penny—appleth or a flower.”
A thrill shot down the painter’s spine. The poor, sickly infant appeared suddenly lovable to him; for the first time, too, he realized the child as an independent entity, with thoughts of its own at work in the queer little brain. Whatever the quality of this little brain, Davie’s heart was sound enough. And this heart was evidently entirely given to his mother. The momentary prick of irrational jealousy that the discovery caused the father was forgotten in softer feelings. His conception of the mother rose with his conception of the child. She was the other side of the relation, and there must be something beautiful in her to correspond with the beauty of her child’s sentiment. The oleograph of “Motherhood” caught his eye again; he saw how insincerely he had painted it, from a mere intellectual idea, unfelt, unrealized; but he saw also the secret of its popularity, each observer contributing the emotion the painter had not felt. His eye dwelt upon it more tolerantly.
“Kiss me, Davie,” he said, “and you shall have a penny now to buy mummy a flower.”
Davie readily put up his lips to clinch the bargain, and his father gave him the coin. The boy regarded it wistfully.
“What do you say?” Billy put in, more amiably.