"I don't suppose they think about anything," said Edith Dalton with a look of unconcern.
"I used to think maybe that was so," said Aunt Jane. "But since I've had so many of 'em——"
"How many have you had?" asked the other quickly.
"Of my own—you mean?" Aunt Jane paused. "I never had but one of my own," she said regretfully. "But here—I've had three hundred and sixty-nine."
Edith Dalton smiled a faint smile.
Aunt Jane watched it and rocked.
"It's different when you've a good many," she said placidly. "You begin to see what they mean—just plain baby! Not because it's your baby, you know—but what they're like and what they mean."
"They don't mean much of anything, do they—except to cry?" The indifferent look held itself, but something had stirred in it.
"Yes, they cry!" Aunt Jane was silent.... "They cry, good and hard sometimes.... And that means something, too. Folks don't let 'em cry half enough, I think! I don't know what it means—their crying so," she admitted. "But it sounds as if it meant something—something more than just tummy-ache.... And their smiling's like that, too. It isn't just smiling at something you do to them, or something you say. It's more as if they were smiling at something inside—kind of as if the whole world was a joke to 'em, and being alive was a kind of beautiful joke—if we could see how 'tis." She was looking down at the bundle in her arms and smiling to it.