"Middle-aged, indeed! You are not thirty-six till the end of September, you know—the 28th of September. And oh, John, you cannot think how young you look! just as if you had stolen all these children, and they were not really yours. You have so many of them, too, while I have only one, and he such a little one—he is only two years old."
While she spoke a bell began to ring, and the two elder children, wishing her good-bye, left the room.
"Do you think those girls are growing like their mother?" asked John.
"I think they are a little. Perhaps that pretty way they have of taking up their eye-glasses when they come forward to look at anything, makes them seem more like than they are."
John scarcely ever mentioned his wife, but before Emily most people spoke without much reserve.
"Only one of the whole tribe is like her in mind and disposition," he continued.
"And that's a good thing," thought Emily, but she did not betray her thought.
While this talk went on the two younger children had got possession, of Mrs. Nemily's watch (which hung from her neck by a long Trichinopoly chain), and were listening to a chime that it played. Emily took the boy on her knee, and it did not appear that he considered himself too big to be nursed, but began to examine the watch, putting it to his ear, while he composedly rested his head on her shoulder.
"Poor little folk," thought John, "how naturally they take to the caresses of a young mother!"
Another bell then rang.