“What shall you call her?” asked Anne.
“Faith!” said Grandmother. “Sweet little Faith, God bless her! and God bless us, and give us wisdom to rear His heavenly flower fit for His garden.”
Anne and I always said that the most beautiful sight we had ever seen was Baby Faith’s christening. It was in October, a bright glorious day. Grandmother hung great branches of maple everywhere, making the sitting-room a royal chamber with scarlet and gold. Rachel had come down for the first time and was on the sofa in a scarlet wrapper, and Grandmother had crowned her with golden leaves, and told her she was the queen, and had come to the christening feast of the princess. Rachel was all ready to be crowned and petted. She kept Manuel close by her side, or sent him now and then on some little errand across the room, never further—and snatched him back again jealously. She did not want him even to look at the baby, though she liked well enough now to look at it herself, had even grown a little vain of it because people admired it so.
“I think it’s real good of me to let you name her, Grandmother!” she said jealously. “And giving her such a mean, poor-sounding name too: so old-fashioned. Ruby Emerald is the name I should have picked out, and after all she’s my baby and not yours; but I’m not going back on what I said. I never would do that, though if I was in your place I shouldn’t want she should have a name her own mother despised.”
I don’t think Grandmother always listened to Rachel; she certainly did not seem to hear her now, for now the minister came in, dear old Parson Truegood. He stopped a moment in the doorway, looking at Grandmother, standing there in her white dress with the baby in her arms. I think the same thought was in his mind that had come to Anne—the thought of Mary and the Child—for he bowed his head as if in prayer, just for a minute. Then he came in, with his cheery smile, and had just the right word for Rachel and Manuel, and all the time it was at the other two he looked.
Little Faith was one of those babies that are beautiful from the very first. Some people will tell you there are none such, but do not believe them. Even the first day there was no mottled depth of redness, only a kind of velvet rose color. That soon faded away and left the white rose instead that Grandmother always called her. She was not pasty white, nor waxen white; it was a clear rosy whiteness; you see, I have only the same word to say over again. White Rose; that is what she was. And every little feature perfect, as if carved with a fairy-fine tool; and her eyes like stars in blue water. Except Grandmother herself, she was the most beautiful thing I ever saw.
She was asleep when the service began; but when the water touched her forehead she woke, and looked up and smiled, a heavenly smile.
Grandmother looked up too, as if she saw some one, or thought to see; and I saw a listening look come over her face, as if she heard some sound, or hoped to hear. And when, a moment later, she knelt down to pray, she moved her dress a little aside, as if making room for some one. Anne knew what it meant. Grandmother had told her. “I believe,” she said, “that a baby’s angel stays by till after it is christened. I can’t tell you just how I know, but I hear—sometimes—I hear sounds that aren’t this-world sounds. And some one speaks to me—without words, yet I understand—oh, yes, I understand.”
It was a pretty fancy; she was full of pretty fancies, many of them coming, I suppose, from her lonely childhood.