“Religions have been thrown away by persons who had no more authentic doubts,” Pelleas gravely maintained.
“I dare say,” Miss Lillieblade piped. “In these days if a man has an old coat he puts on a new doubt, and society is satisfied.”
Thereafter the baby arrived, a mere collection of hand embroidery and lace, with an angel in the midst of these soft billows. The baby looked quite like a photograph made by the new school, with the high lights on long sweeping skirts and away up at the top of the picture a vague, delicious face. Our grandniece Enid is an adorable little mother, looking no less like a mermaid than does Lisa, but with a light in her eyes as if still more of the mystery of the sea were come upon her. And, as a mer-mother should, she had conversation not exclusively confined to the mer-child. I heard her on the subject of prints with the bishop’s lady, and the mer-child was not three months old.
The christening was to have been at eleven o’clock, and at twelve Pelleas had an appointment which it was impossible to delay, or so he thought, having a most masculine regard for hours, facts, and the like. Therefore when, at fifteen after eleven, the bishop had not yet arrived, Pelleas began uneasily suggesting taking leave. Enid looked at him with a kind of deep-sea-cave reproach before which every one else would have been helpless; but Pelleas, whose nature is built on straight lines, patted her and kissed the baby at large upon the chest and, benign, was still inexorable.
“But who will be godfather?” Enid cried disconsolately, and, young-wife-like, looked reproachfully at her young husband.
At that moment the hall door, as if it had been an attentive listener as long as it could and must now give the true answer, opened and admitted Hobart Eddy, come late to the christening and arrived with that vague air of asking why he was where he was which lent to him all the charm of ennui without its bad taste.
“Hobart,” Enid cried ecstatically, “you shall be godfather!”
Hobart Eddy continued to bend to kiss my hand and then sought the hand of Madame Sally and next the hand of Madame Polly Cleatam. Finally he bowed before Enid and fixed his monocle on the baby.
“It opens and shuts its eyes,” he earnestly observed; “how these baby people imitate the doll factories. It’s disgraceful.”
“Kiss him!” the mer-mother commanded, as if she were the prompter.