Christmas past, the new year soon began. January, February, and March, three ugly, dirty, slushy months, in Millington at least, followed each other in gloomy succession. With April things began to mend a little. Fresh sprouts made their appearance, with infinite labour and patience, even on the few smoke-dried shrubs and trees in Brewer Street. And in-doors at No. 32, there was comfort and content; for Mrs. Baldwin had been far from idle these last few months, and surveyed with no small satisfaction the piles of neatly-fingered little garments which bore witness to her industry.
Then came May, sweet, fickle, provoking May! Mois de Marie, which still we dream of as loveliest of all the twelve; though seldom, if ever, are our fond visions realised. But this year May was, for once, true to her legendary character, and the end of the month was fresh and sweet and genial, as we all fancy May used to be, long ago, when we were children: in the times when Christmas was always clear and frosty, seen through a brilliant vista of holly and mistletoe, plum-pudding and mince-pie; and Midsummer’s-day a suitable fairy carnival of sunshine and flowers, dances on the green, or picnics in the wood.
What has come over the world in these later days? Why is Christmas, as often as not, muddy and foggy and raw, ending in uneatable plum-pudding or deplorably indigestible mince-pies? Is it in us, or in it, this extraordinary change? Where have they all gone to—the beautiful winters and summers of long ago? The lovely, hot, sunny days, when the nights seemed years apart, and the deep green woods the proper place to live in—when we made daisy-chains and cowslip-balls, and all manner of sweet, silly, summer things, whose very names now sound as the dreams of a former existence. The spring with its blossoms, the autumn with its fruit. The bright sparkling winter, with its snow-balls and skates, roast chestnuts and fire-side games, surely the most delightful of all! What has come over them all?
Now-a-days, all the year round, with few if any exceptions, the days have a uniform shade of grey. With the exception of certain physical sensations, certain practical and not unwelcome suggestions from the housemaid, to the effect that “it is getting time to begin fires again,” many a week would go by without my thinking of, or realising the change of the seasons. Then again some trifle will bring it all back to me—the first snow-drop head peeping through the soil, a cluster of red berries on the hedge some early autumn day, the children’s voices passing my door, intent on a summer day’s ramble, as beautiful to them, I suppose, as it once was to me; or, more tender still, the sweet, quaint words of the Christmas carols in the village street—with any of these, the old wonderful feeling surges over me to overwhelming; and I ask myself if indeed my youth is gone for ever, or but veiled for a time, to be found again with all the beauty and truth, the essentially everlasting, in the far-off land we must all believe in, or cease to exist?
But I have wandered from Brewer Street, and what happened there one Sunday morning a bright, lovely May morning, the last day but one of the capricious month.
A daughter was born to the young couple, with whom fortune had played such malicious tricks. A sweet, tiny, soft, blue-eyed doll of a thing. Truly the very nicest of babies! Healthy as heart could wish, comfortable and content.
“A real Sunday child, is she not?” said Marion to Geoffrey, as with tremendous precaution and solemnity he bent down to kiss the funny pink nose emerging from the nest of flannel by her side. “A nice, good, happy Sunday child. I am very glad she is not a boy. A girl will be far more of a comfort to us, won’t she, Geoffrey? And may I call her ‘Mary?’ ”
“Of course you may, my darling,” he replied, “or any name you choose.”
He would not have objected to “Kerenhappuch,” or “Aurora Borealis,” as a small friend of mine once suggested at a family consultation of the kind. He was perfectly satisfied with the baby, whatever its sex or name, seeing that its mother, the light of his eyes, the being for whose happiness he was willing, nay, ready at any moment to die, was well and strong, and pronounced by the authorities to be in a fair way towards a speedy and prosperous recovery.