Presently baby, who had also been asleep, awoke and cried, and then the woman opened her eyes and looked at the child, while I hushed her to sleep again.
There must be something in a baby's face that has a miraculous effect on every woman (as if these sweet angels, fresh from God, make us all young and all beautiful), and it was even so at that moment.
Never shall I forget the transfiguration in the woman's face when she looked into the face of my baby. The expression of brutality and degradation disappeared, and through the bleared eyes and over the coarsened features there came the light of an almost celestial smile.
After a while the woman spoke to me. She spoke in a husky voice which seemed to be compounded of the effects of rum and raw night air.
"That your'n," she said.
I answered her.
"Boy or gel?"
I told her.
"'Ow old?"
I told her that too.