“Sweetheart, you know jest how much I love you, don’t you?”
And she said, “Yes.”
And then I kissed her several times in various places on her face, every one on ’em sweet places. And went on and talked dretful good to her about the new baby. I confided in her, told her all about how the little new soul had come onbeknown to itself into a great, strange world, how helpless it wuz, how weak, and how we must all help it and try to make it feel at home amongst us.
And I tried to explain it to her, that as she wuz here first she owed a courtesy to the newcomer, and that she must be ready and willin’ to neighbor with her; I didn’t use jest the words, but them wuz my idees.
I told her how blind the little creeter wuz, and Delight, if only out of politeness, must try to see for her, lead her straight over ways she knew nothin’ about, and keep her from harmin’ herself. How baby couldn’t talk for herself at all now, and Delight must talk for her, good talk that the little one could learn of her bimeby. How she couldn’t walk, and Delight, bein’ stronger, must go ahead of her and make a pretty path for her to foller when she got big enough. I told her jest how hard it wuz for the baby to be put here so helpless in the midst of sorrows and troubles and dangers, and how we must all of us be jest as good to her as we could out of pity for the dear little creeter.
So I rousted up Delight’s pity for her, and she wuz all animated about helpin’ her, and I told her the baby had come to be a great blessin’ and comfort to her, but she must take great care of it and not let it get harmed in any way, for it would need her care and love for a long time.
And don’t you see that the fact of Delight havin’ to do a kindness to the baby, havin’ to take thought and study out good things to do for her, wuz the surest way to make her love her? For it is a great fact in our human nater that you can’t love them you have injured in any way, and at the same time if you have ever been good to anybody you always feel softer toward ’em and more mellerer.
Curious, hain’t it? But it is a fact, and I spoze the reason on’t is you have sort o’ lowered yourself in your own estimation by doing a onkind act, and so in order to satisfy your mental criticism on yourself and try to make it right, you lay hold and bring up all the faults of that person you can to justify your own act, and so you keep on that mental naggin’ at ’em, that oncomfortable sort of a feelin’ toward ’em makes you restless and oneasy, and you are glad every time you can stand justified to your own consciousness by ketchin’ ’em in a bad act—hain’t that so, now? Why, I know it is, so I made sure Delight shouldn’t begin wrong. For when you do a good, helpful thing for a person your hull soul feels comfortable and you bring up unconscious mental reasons why you did it, it wuz because they wuz so good, so smart, and so you keep on feelin’ good and comfortable, you keep on praisin’ ’em to your own self till you git fairly in love with ’em, as it were.
A very curious thing. But the way I do when I git hold of a strange fact or truth, I don’t wait to explain it full to myself before I act on it; no, I grasp hold of it and use it for my own benefit and afterwards wonder at it to my heart’s content.
So Delight got to thinkin’ she wuz necessary to the baby’s happiness, and that tickled her little self-esteem jest as though she wuz a older child (only accordin’ to her weight). She got to thinkin’ she must watch over her or she might git hurt, which called out all the good motherly protectin’ impulses of her little soul which wuz in her (still accordin’ to her weight, forty pounds more or less). And day by day Delight’s love for the little creeter grew till it wuz fairly beautiful to see ’em together, and so Josiah said, and her Pa and Ma and the neighbors.