“And you may reckon on this, Shone,” said she, “I’ll take every bit as much care of him as if he were my own. There is an empty place in my house, and in my heart, since I have lost Bessie, and I will put the little man there.”
A couple of weeks under the care of Shian told on the child. He put on fat, became more merry, crowed, chirped, and waxed rosy.
It was a delight to his father to see him, and he did not always return from the pit alone. One day he brought with him Ebenezer Llewellyn to criticise the babe and judge whether the improvement was real or fictitious. He, a father of fourteen children, ten of whom he had reared, after weighing the little one and turning down his lips to see if the colour were red, gave verdict that was favourable. Then came what Shian called “the committee,” a body of workmen on the shift with Shone, to see with their own eyes that all was going on well with the “shaver.” He belonged to the pit, and all the men felt an interest in him, and all wanted to be satisfied that the child was flourishing. All wished to have their say about him, and to give Shian advice as to how he was to be dieted and clothed.
More critical than the rest was Shone, and the dressmaker was obliged to be forbearing with him, for his criticism became at times captious. As, for instance, on one occasion when he came to resume the child and found she had cut out for its amusement a score of dancing men and women, the latter with tall Welsh hats, holding hands, capering vigorously—she had cut them with her scissors out of a sheet of folded paper—Shone put on a grave face.
“I think you should not have encouraged levity in the boy,” said he. “I wouldn’t have the idea put into his head that men and women are created to dance.”
“But, Shone, they are only paper.”
“Paper or flesh and blood is all the same. They are dancing. I don’t like it. You can’t be too careful with a child. It’s just when they’re young that they take in ideas, as they do nourishment—they suck it in in buckets.”
“How would you have me cut them out?—walking to chapel?”
“That would be better.”
“Shone, if I do that, I must make them prance. One cannot cut out these paper men and women without giving them high action. You would not have a whole train of them prancing to church like war-horses!”