IN WHICH, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A LONG TIME,
I DO NOT TALK AT ALL, BUT AM WELL CONTENT
TO SIT QUIETLY BY AND LISTEN TO THE
LOVELY NEWS THAT L. H. D., WHO, YOU WILL
REMEMBER, I TOLD YOU ABOUT IN THE PREFACE,
HAS BROUGHT
One gloriously sunny morning Liza opened her grey eyes wide, yawned, and decided that she would really stay awake and consider the business of the day. She sat up in her little crib, looking adorably pink and white and very huggable, with her tousled golden curls playing hide and seek with each other on her neck. Across the room, in her own bed, still sound asleep, lay Martha Mary.
“Sister Lazy Bones,” thought Butterfly, and wondered how anyone could want to sleep when Mr. Cock Robin was singing such a splendid song in the vines at the windows. Liza looked around the room expectantly, then the corners of her mouth drooped pitifully, and a big tear rolled down her cheek. For where was Mother Dear this beautiful morning? Never before, as long as Liza could remember, had she failed to find Mother bending over her when she awakened, with a big kiss waiting in the corner of her mouth for her baby daughter.
Just at that minute, luckily, Nurse Huggins came in, smiling, oh, so happily! Liza, of course, just couldn’t help smiling, too, though she had not any idea at all why she was so glad.
“Please,” said she, “where’s my Muvver Dear?”
(She never took time to say Mother quite distinctly, though she really could if she wanted to.)
Nurse just laughed mysteriously, in the annoying way that grown-ups sometimes have, kissed the little Butterfly, and bade her get quickly into her wrapper and slippers. By this time Martha Mary was awake, too, and following Liza’s example. In another moment the two children were standing before Mother Dear’s door, which was very quietly opened from the inside by a brown-eyed lady, dressed all in white, whom they had never seen before. Mother lay in the big, four-poster bed, looking a little pale and a little tired, but oh, so “smily.” Right next to her was a little cradle, all blue lace and ribbons, and inside— Guess what! There was a baby, a teeny, tiny bit of a one, all red and wrinkled, and not half so big as Liza’s doll. At first Martha Mary could only look from the big bed to the cradle and then back again. Then, when they realized what a wonderful present Mother Dear had given them, they nearly smothered her with kisses. No one said a word, because, you see, when a person is really and truly happy they can’t talk much because of the choky feeling in their throat. But after Martha Mary and Liza had each touched the crumpled rose-leaf hands of the new baby, and looked into its tiny face.
“Please,” said Mary, “is it a sister or a brother?”
Mother laughed, then,—she just couldn’t help it. How silly she had been not to have told them!
“It’s a sister, Ladykin Dear,” said Father, who came into the room just in time to hear the question. “And she is just as glad to see you as you are to see her, only she sleeps so much that she hasn’t time to tell you so, herself.”