After this, as Palestrina remarked, it was quite refreshing to hear that the curate's wife had got a new baby. It was born on Sunday, and the anxious father spent his days bicycling wildly to and fro between his own house and the church, hopelessly confusing his reading of the service, and then flying back to inquire about his wife's health. Led by him we prayed successively for fine weather and for rain, while the Sunday-school teachers' meeting was announced for 2 a.m. on the following Saturday, and the Coal Club notices were inextricably confused with the banns of marriage. After each service the distracted little man would leap on his bicycle again, and, scattering the departing congregation with his bicycle bell, he was off down the hill to his house. His perturbation was nothing compared with the confusion at home, where, so far as I could make out, the bewildered household did nothing but run up and down stairs, and madly offer each other cups of tea.
My sister's kind heart suggested that we should have Peggy, the eldest child, to stay with us until her mother should be better. Is it necessary to mention the fact that Palestrina is fat and very pretty, and that she spoils me dreadfully? Do I want a book, I generally find that Palestrina has written for it, almost before I had realized that life was a wilderness without it. I have never known her out of temper, nor anything else but placid and serene. And she has a low, gurgling laugh, and a certain way of saying, "Oh, that will be very nice!" to any proposal that one makes, which one must admit makes her a very charming and a very easy person to live with. She is fond of children, and she announced to Peggy with a beaming smile this morning that she had a new little brother.
Peggy went on quietly with her breakfast for some time without making any remark; then she gave a little sigh, and said: "Mamma thought she had enough children already, but I suppose God thought otherwise."
Peggy has been in low spirits all day, and closely following some line of reasoning of her own she has flatly refused to say her prayers at bedtime.
Mrs. Fielden rode over to see us this morning, in her dark habit and the neat boots which she loves to tap with her riding-crop. She came into the dim hall like the embodiment of Spring or of Life, and sat down in her oddly-shaped habit as though she were at home and in no hurry to go off anywhere else. This gives a feeling of repose to a sick man. One knew that she would probably stop to luncheon, and that one would not have to say to her half a dozen times in the morning, "Please don't go."
Presently Margaret Jamieson, who had been doing the whole work of the curate's household during the late trying time, came with the baby in her arms to show him to Palestrina. Her manner had a charming air of matronliness about it, and she threw back the fretted silk of the veil that covered the face of the little creature in her arms with an air of pride that was rather pretty to see. But Eliza, who had raced over to our house in the usual Jamieson headlong fashion, to say something to us on the subject of textual criticism, looked severely at the infant through her glasses, and remarked that she had no sympathy whatever with that sort of thing. Margaret hugged the baby closer to her, and Mettie, who had pattered over to see us with her cousin Eliza, remarked that children and their upbringing were doubtless among the great risks of matrimony.
"I am sure," said Eliza, "when one sees how happy Kate is with James, it makes one feel that marriage is not so very great a risk after all."
That there should be an element of sarcasm in this remark did not even suggest itself to Eliza.
"We should all be thankful," piped forth Mettie, who is always ready to talk, "that it has turned out so well. Kate's courage and independence of mind seem exactly suited to Mr. Ward. But that is what I think about us all at Belmont; our characteristics are so different that any gentleman coming amongst us might find something to attract him in one, if not in the others. Margaret is our home-bird, and Eliza is so cultured, and Kate——"
The two Miss Jamiesons were looking very uncomfortable, and Margaret said, "O Mettie, dear!" while Mrs. Fielden made an excuse for walking over to the piano. There was a piece of music open upon it. "Do sing it," she said to Palestrina.