She crooned over the bundle, smiling tenderly.
Ursula fidgeted on the sofa.
"There, there, hush-aby, sweet lamb, hush-aby!" cooed Mary.
Thomas nestled comfortably against her.
"Oh, Mary, I wish you wouldn't talk that silly baby talk. It's such nonsense—brings them up to bad habits. I don't intend the kid to hear anything but good English. I read in a book that the misnaming of common objects definitely retards a child's mental development. Fancy calling feet 'tootsies' and dogs 'bow-wows' when the real words are so much easier."
Mary smiled a little.
"Oh, it's all very well to smile. You're so old-fashioned, Mary. Come along to mother, sweetheart. He has been held by a stranger quite long enough, Mary. The new system is that children should be brought up to lie in their cots and not be dandled about all day like handbags. They must hate it. Put him in the cot, will you?"
Mary laid the protesting Thomas in a nest of bows and muslin, and stood waiting for Ursula to gather him up and comfort the wails which greeted his deprivation of protecting arms. But Ursula lay back serenely.
Before the arrival of her son, she had declared that all babies bored her to sobs, but recently, having consumed vast quantities of literature on the subject of their upbringing, she had learnt all about them that was to be known. Mary, who had only nursed several dozens of Anderby infants through croup and colic and teething, and cuddled them in unenlightened arms, felt terribly behind the times. She hated to hear children cry.
"Don't you ever want to cuddle him though, and say silly things? I thought all mothers would."