“Yes, Gerald, to be sure, you are. I had forgotten. I apologize. Now, do not be upset about it! Stop pouting! You are a god, that is quite understood. You are immortal, you are going to outlive me indefinitely, and you are going to perform wonders in Antan, and it is all going to be very nice. I hope so, anyhow. I was only saying it would be much better for us to have no son.”
But Gerald answered: “Do not keep contradicting me in that maddening way! If you again fly out at me like that, Maya, you will rouse my temper. Then I shall rage and roar and, quite possibly, ramp. I will bluster and speak harshly. I will huff, I will puff, I will blow the house down. For I insist it would be quite nice if we had a son.”
“Oh, very well, then!” said Maya; and she turned with that sulkiness which she ever and again displayed—nowadays,—toward a large basket of magics.
“—I mean, though, once he were old enough. Babies are too limited in conversation, they are too vocal, and they are too leaky.”
Maya had lifted from an amber basin a small shining lizard. She held it toward her mouth, breathing softly upon the creature, in the while that she answered Gerald.
“I think, myself,” said Maya, “that, since you insist upon having a son, he might as well be seven or eight years old to begin with.”
Then Maya took off the top of the basket, she reached far into the blue basket with the hand in which she held the shining lizard, and out of this basket, clinging to Maya’s hand for support, climbed a freckled red-haired boy, about eight years old, in blue garments, and having as yet only one upper front tooth.
“We have now got a splendid son,” said Gerald, contentedly. “But who is to christen our son? For I shall of course call him Theodorick Quentin, just as my father and my oldest brother were called.”
The boy was, thus, named Theodorick Quentin Musgrave, and Gerald delighted in the child. For the Lord of the Third Truth put off once more his entry into his kingdom....
“I told you so!” said Maya.