“Well, sir, I admit the situation is perplexing. Nevertheless, you remain, so far as I can see, one of the three official heads of the Christian church, in every denomination. And as such, you must be wholly competent to administer the sacred rites of that baptism to which we Musgraves are accustomed.”
He who had been a bishop laughed again. For an instant he glanced sidewise at Maya, rather impishly. Then the god called to him Theodorick Quentin Musgrave.
The boy came forward without speaking. There had never been any dearer brat since time began, Gerald reflected, than was this sturdy droll red-headed jackanapes who waited there holding his small chin well up in order to look with politely puzzled interest at the storm god’s glittering face and the tiny lightnings which played about it. Gerald was abeam with the most fatuous sort of pride in Theodorick’s perfect behavior. Gerald glowed all over, now that awkward matter of the boy’s christening was being at last attended to, by the very highest authority. And Gerald nodded smilingly and with some inconsequence at his dear stupid Maya, so that she too might note how splendidly Theodorick was behaving. The boy was displaying the composure and the excellent manners of a true Musgrave.
Then the storm god dipped his fingers in his unfinished glass of milk, and upon Theodorick’s lifted forehead he drew a sign. Gerald was not wholly certain, afterward, that it was the sign of a cross.
“This is another sort of baptism than that which restored my youth. For youth this child already has,—to every seeming,” the god said, a bit unaccountably. “Therefore I now release this child whom I did not create, I release him from the bondage of the woman and of the Adversary who caused him to live upon this earth. I decree a forgiveness for the seven crimes. I cry a remission of the seven punishments.”
“I must say, though, you have been long enough about it,” Maya placidly observed....
As for Gerald, now that the ceremony was over, he was unaffectedly hugging Theodorick, and telling him that he was far too big a boy to be kissing people, and the vaguely puzzled, clinging child was asking, But who started it, Father?...
And the storm god was saying to Maya, “Do you forget, my dear Havvah, that it is from your service I am releasing him?”
She answered, still quite placidly: “So far as that goes, the imp has well earned a holiday; and it is not as if I were dependent upon him. No, but I confess to wondering—and not for the first time, either,—just what you may be up to.”