My father sat down on the nurse’s chair, the women grouped round him. He continued to gaze on the contents of the cradle, and at length said musingly:—“And Homer was once like this!”
At this moment—and no wonder, considering the propinquity of the candle to his visual organs—Homer’s infant likeness commenced the first untutored melodies of nature.
“Homer improved greatly in singing as he grew older,” observed Mr Squills, the accoucheur, who was engaged in some mysteries in a corner of the room.
My father stopped his ears:—“Little things can make a great noise,” said he, philosophically; “and the smaller the thing the greater noise it can make.”
So saying, he crept on tiptoe to the bed, and, clasping the pale hand held out to him, whispered some words that no doubt charmed and soothed the ear that heard them, for that pale hand was suddenly drawn from his own, and thrown tenderly round his neck. The sound of a gentle kiss was heard through the stillness.
“Mr Caxton, sir,” cried Mr Squills, in rebuke, “you agitate my patient—you must retire.”
My father raised his mild face, looked round apologetically, brushed his eyes with the back of his hand, stole to the door, and vanished.
“I think,” said a kind gossip seated at the other side of my mother’s bed, “I think, my dear, that Mr Caxton might have shown more joy,—more natural feeling, I may say,—at the sight of the baby: and such a baby! But all men are just the same, my dear—brutes—all brutes, depend upon it.”
“Poor Austin!” sighed my mother feebly—“how little you understand him.”
“And now I shall clear the room,” said Mr Squills.—“Go to sleep, Mrs Caxton.”