“More care they could not take.”
“My darling baby! Has she grown?”
“Yes; they talk of taking her out of the long clothes soon. Nancy is like a second mother to her.”
Kate's foot was beating the floor. “Oh, why can't her own mother——” she began, and then in a faltering voice, “but that cannot be, I suppose.... Do her eyes change? Are they still blue? But she was asleep, you say. My dear baby! Was it very late? Nine o'clock? Just nine? I was thinking of her at that moment. It is true I am always thinking of her, but I remember, because the clock was striking. 'She will be in her little cot now,' I thought, 'bathed and clean, and so pretty in her nightdress, the one with the frill!' My sweet, sweet angel!”
Her speech was confused and broken. “Do you think if I never see her until... Will I know her if... It's useless to think of that, though. Is her hair like... What is the colour of her hair, Philip?”
“Fair, quite fair; as fair as mine was——”
She swirled round, came face to face with him, and cried, “Philip, Philip, why can't I have my darling to myself? She would be well enough here. I could keep her quiet. Oh, she would not disturb you. And I should be so happy with my little Kate for company. The time is long with me sometimes, Philip, and I could play with her all the day. And then at night, when she would be in the cot, I could make her little stock of clothes—her frocks and her little pinafores, and——”
“Impossible, Kate, impossible!” said Philip.
She turned to the window. “Yes,” she said, in a choking voice, “I suppose it would even be stealing to fetch her away now. Only think! A mother stealing her own child! O gracious heaven, have I sinned myself so far from my innocent baby! My child, my child! My little Katherine!”
Her bosom heaved, and she said in a hard tone, “I daresay they think I'm a bad mother because I left her to others to nurse her and to love her, to see her every day and all day, to bathe her sweet body, and to comb her yellow hair, to look into her little blue eyes, and to watch all her pretty, pretty ways—Oh, yes, yes.” she said, with increasing emotion, “I daresay they think that of me.”