He didn't laugh because he felt particularly funny, but because the little diplomat, bent on conquest, wanted to show a tiny tooth that came into his mouth one day, he didn't know how.
He had never seen it himself, but he knew it was there and was a treasure, for one time in the dead of the night when all his dread enemies, the Egyptians, were fast asleep, and the wind howled and the rain beat upon the roof, his mother brought his father to his hiding place and holding the light high up above his head, she touched him lightly under the chin and said: "Laugh, now, and show papa baby's tooth." Then he did as he was told and his father looked long and carefully and then laughed too, kissed him and went away.
When the girls saw it they all smiled and kissed him too.
About this time he wanted his mother and "the babe wept."
When the king's daughter saw his red lips quivering and the tears hanging on his long, curling lashes, love and compassion filled her heart, and thinking of her father's wicked command: "Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river," she said, sadly, "this is one of the Hebrews' children."
Then his sister—I suppose it was the same one who had "stood afar off to wit what would be done to him" and who had approached—said, "Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?"
"And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, 'Go.' And the maid went and called the child's mother."
"And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, 'Take this child away and nurse it for me and I will give thee thy wages.' And the woman took the child and nursed it." Wasn't that the sublimest conquering of ambition and crime by love ever known?
