"No flannel on this precious child!" mother almost screamed the minute we got him off the train and started to drive home. "Why, it's positively flying in the face of Providence to leave his band off this early!" And mother looked at Cousin Eunice like she had done it a-purpose.
"Oh, Aunt Mary, please don't," poor Cousin Eunice said like she was about to cry. "For the last eleven months there has been scarcely a thing discussed in my presence but belly-bands!" (There weren't any men around.) "It seems if a woman ever has one baby her thoughts never travel away from flannel bands afterward!"
"But pneumonia! Cholera infantum! Teething!" Mother kept on, hugging Waterloo close.
"That's what twenty-three of my neighbors tell me," Cousin Eunice answered, "then nineteen others say it's cruel to keep him all swathed up in this hot weather, while eleven said to leave it off until his second summer, and fifteen said for me to——"
"What does Doctor Gordon say?" mother asked, to change the subject off of the neighbors.
"He said, 'Damn those old women!'" Cousin Eunice told her, which made her jump, although it looks like she has lived with father long enough not to.
Right after dinner they started up the talk again. Should Waterloo be banded or disbanded? They hadn't talked long when Mammy Lou came into the room holding something under her apron. She looked kinder mad and dignified at mother and Cousin Eunice because they hadn't asked her for her say-so about bands.
"If it's entirely respectable for me to speak before I'm spoke to," she commenced, her voice very proud and haughty, "I'd like for you all to pay me some mind. There's two subject's I'm well qualified to speak about and one is babies. Ain't I done raised a bushel basket full o' little niggers, let alone that one beautiful little white angel that's the peartest and sweetest of any in the state?"
Which made me feel very much embarrassed with modestness.
"We all know that you made a good job of Ann," Cousin Eunice said very pleasantly just to pacify her. "What would you suggest about little Rufus?"