"I am no judge of babies," he said, "but—it is very small."
"It is small, that is why I can carry him. The best goods are wrapped in the smallest parcels."
"The child looks very delicate—ill, I should say."
"Oh, no! it has been ill, but is much, much better now. How could even a strong child stand all that my precious one has had to go through without suffering? But that is over now. Now at length we shall have rest and happiness, baby and me, in each other." Then catching the child to her heart, she rocked herself, and with tears of love flowing, sang—
"Thou art my sceptre, crown and all."
She laid the child again on her lap and sat looking at it admiringly in the rosy light of the fire that suffused it. As the flames had given to her cheek a fictitious color, so did they now give to the infant a glow as of health that it did not actually possess.
"You must be tired," said Iver.
"I am tired; see how my limbs shake. That is why my baby trembles; but as for my arms, they are past tiredness, they are just one dead ache from the shoulder to the wrist."
"Are you hungry, Matabel?"
"Oh, no! All I want is rest, rest. I am weary."