“Oh! as a wife—”
“No, as a ward. So she came to live here. I am sure there was no harm in it. But my neighbours said there was, and the widow Weltraum told me the girl’s character would suffer. What could I do?—Oh yes, I recollect all now! I married her, that my old friend’s child might have a roof to her head, and come to no harm. You see I was forced to do her that injury, for after all, poor young creature, it was a sad lot for her. A dull book-worm like me—cochleæ vitam agens, Mr Squills—leading the life of a snail. But my shell was all I could offer to my poor friend’s orphan.”
“Mr Caxton, I honour you,” said Squills emphatically, jumping up and spilling half a tumbler-full of scalding punch over my father’s legs. “You have a heart, sir! and I understand why your wife loves you. You seem a cold man; but you have tears in your eyes at this moment.”
“I dare say I have,” said my father, rubbing his shins: “it was boiling!”
“And your son will be a comfort to you both,” said Mr Squills, reseating himself, and, in his friendly emotion, wholly abstracted from all consciousness of the suffering he had inflicted. “He will be a dove of peace to your ark.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said my father ruefully, “only those doves, when they are small, are a very noisy sort of birds—non talium avium cantus somnum reducunt. However, it might have been worse. Leda had twins.”
“So had Mrs Barnabas last week,” rejoined the accoucheur. “Who knows what may be in store for you yet? Here’s a health to Master Caxton, and lots of brothers and sisters to him!”
“Brothers and sisters! I am sure Mrs Caxton will never think of such a thing, sir,” said my father almost indignantly. “She’s much too good a wife to behave so. Once, in a way, it is all very well; but twice—and as it is, not a paper in its place, nor a pen mended the last three days: I, too, who can only write ‘cuspide duriusculâ’—and the Baker coming twice to me for his bill too! The Ilithyiæ are troublesome deities, Mr Squills.”
“Who are the Ilithyiæ,” asked the accoucheur.
“You ought to know,” answered my father, smiling. “The female dæmons who presided over the Neogilos or New-born. They take the name from Juno. See Homer, book XI. By the bye, will my Neogilos be brought up like Hector or Astyanax,—videlicet, nourished by its mother or by a nurse?”