“It is going to be very improving for Moira,” was her thought, and she realized with a pang that she had been reading Hugo’s book for more than a year now, and was not yet halfway through it.
Mrs. Seymour’s brother was among those who noticed her partiality for the baby.
“Look,” she said to him one day, with enthusiasm, holding out one of the child’s tiny pink hands, “how remarkably made they are. She’s the same all over. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a perfect baby.”
Blaydon laughed, thereby eliciting a brilliant response in kind from Moira. The vibrations of his big voice had tickled her young flesh.
“Well, Mathilda, the broadest road to your heart is still a pair of hands. I remember your telling me that poor old Ned first got you with his.”
“Hands and feet,” she replied. “I don’t mind anything else but they ought to be beautiful.”
A few days afterward he came upon her in the garden, again with Ellen’s daughter.
“Que voulez-vous,” she was saying, “que voulez-vous, ma p’tite? Voulez-vous maman?”
The soft syllables seemed to please Moira’s ears, for she was mirthfully bubbling things that sounded not unlike them. As Blaydon stepped out he thought his sister a little apologetic, but she did not put down the child.
“The little thing wandered out here while I was reading,” she said. “She quite seems to follow me about.”