“You don’t need any words—I’ve been through it,” I said.
“Oh, but she’s so beautiful! Tell me, honestly, isn’t that really so?”
“My dear,” I said, “she is like you.”
“Mary,” she went on, half whispering, “I think it solves all my problems—all that I wrote you about. I don’t believe I shall ever be unhappy again. I can’t believe that such a thing has really happened—that I’ve been given such a treasure. And she’s my own! I can watch her little body grow and help to make it strong and beautiful! I can help mould her little mind—see it opening up, one chamber of wonder after another! I can teach her all the things I have had to grope so to get!”
“Yes,” I said, trying to speak with conviction. I added, hastily: “I’m glad you don’t find motherhood disappointing.”
“Oh, it’s a miracle!” she exclaimed. “A woman who could be dissatisfied with anything afterwards would be an ingrate!” She paused, then added: “Mary, now she’s here in flesh, I feel she’ll be a bond between Douglas and me. He must see her rights, her claim upon life, as he couldn’t see mine.”
I assented gravely. So that was the thing she was thinking most about—a bond between her husband and herself! A moment later the nurse appeared in the doorway, and Sylvia set up a cry: “My baby! Where’s my baby? I want to see my baby!”
“Sylvia, dear,” I said, “there’s something about the baby that has to be explained.”
Instantly she was alert. “What is the matter?”
I laughed. “Nothing, dear, that amounts to anything. But the little one’s eyes are inflamed—that is to say, the lids. It’s something that happens to newly-born infants.”