"Well, of course I consider Thomas's good before my own pleasure." Thomas from his cradle, objected loudly to his mother's altruism, but Ursula only put out a cool, white hand and touched his shawl. "He must be trained. He will soon learn."
The training was still in progress, when half an hour later Mrs. Toby arrived in a state of fluttering jubilation, to congratulate Ursula on her triumphant achievement.
"Well, my dear, this is nice! How lovely! How quite sweet he is! Dear, dear! I must say you look quite well. Better than I did, after my first. Toby drove me over from Market Burton, and I'm sure I wanted to come, though he does go so fast round the corners, and we always break down on Casserby Hill. But I thought I must slip up for a minute and see how you are and the dear child. Why, he's smiling! Dear little man!"
An appropriate tear stole down Mrs. Toby's cheek. She had four children of her own, whose existence had been to her a perpetual source of distressful agitation, but she still regarded the advent of other people's babies as a matter for tearful congratulation.
She hovered over the cot, blinking and smiling, and absent-mindedly dropping one or two little parcels on the floor. Mary decided that those strange, clucking noises she made with her tongue were intended for the edification of Thomas, who ungratefully declined to be amused.
Ursula was politely attentive to the privileged absurdities of a mother of four.
"I thought I might just bring along a few of Lucy's flannels, and the cot cover I bought for Gladys. When you've had four like I have, you'll know how these little things come in handy. And I just slipped one or two other little things into a parcel. Dear me, where is it?"
"How nice of you! That's ripping!"
Mary observed Ursula's occasional lapses from pure English with malicious relish. They compensated a little for her feeling of exclusion from the experience of the two mothers. She was not used to being out of it and disliked the sensation. Even little Mrs. Toby seemed to assume an air of faint patronage towards her uninitiation.
"Toby's talking to your husband, Mary," she said. "I left them together in the market. I thought I'd just slip along and see how Ursula and the precious child were."