Freydis shook her proud dark head. Her smiling was grim.
"Decidedly, I shall not ever understand you. Doddering patriarch, do you not comprehend you are already discoursing about a score or two of grandchildren on the ground of having a five-minute-old daughter, whom you have not yet seen? Nor is that child's future, it may be, yours to settle—But go to your wife, for this is Niafer's man who is talking, and not mine. Go up, Methuselah, and behold the new life which you have created and cannot control!"
Manuel went to Niafer, and found her sewing. "My dear, this will not do at all, for you ought to be in bed with the newborn child, as is the custom with the mothers of Philistia."
"What nonsense!" says Niafer, "when I have to be changing every one of the pink bows on Melicent's caps for blue bows."
"Still, Niafer, it is eminently necessary for us to be placating the Philistines in all respects, in this delicate matter of your having a baby."
Niafer grumbled, but obeyed. She presently lay in the golden bed of Freydis: then Manuel duly looked at the contents of the small heaving bundle at Niafer's side: and whether or no he scaled the conventional peaks of emotion was nobody's concern save Manuel's. He began, in any event, to talk in the vein which fathers ordinarily feel such high occasions to demand. But Niafer, who was never romantic nowadays, merely said that, anyhow, it was a blessing it was all over, and that she hoped, now, they would soon be leaving Sargyll.
"But Freydis is so kind, my dear," said Manuel, "and so fond of you!"
"I never in my life," declared Niafer, "knew anybody to go off so terribly in their looks as that two-faced cat has done since the first time I saw her prancing on her tall horse and rolling her snake eyes at you. As for being fond of me, I trust her exactly as far as I can see her."
"Yet, Niafer, I have heard you declare, time and again—"
"But if you did, Manuel, one has to be civil."