"Oh, well, if you only mean he's weighty when you say he's beautiful, mebbe you're right!..."
"You're unnatural, John," said Mrs. MacDermott.
"Are all babies like that?" he asked.
"All the good-looking ones are. Give him to me again, Eleanor, dear!" She took the baby from its mother, and holding it tightly in her arms, walked up and down the room singing it to sleep. "He's asleep," she said in a whisper, coming closer to them. She held the child so that they could see the tiny face in the firelight. They did not speak. Eleanor, leaning back in her chair, and John sitting forward in his, and Mrs. MacDermott standing with the baby in her arms, looked on the child.
"I'm its father," said John, at last. "That seems comic!"
"And I'm its mother," Eleanor murmured.
Mrs. MacDermott lifted the child so that her lips could touch its tiny mouth. "Five generations in the one house," she said. "I bless God for this day!"
III
"Will you be able to come with me to London at the end of the week?" John said at tea that evening.
"She's not near herself yet," Uncle William exclaimed.