And then I named several towns as my sister had, but my suggestions were not regarded. At this point baby began to roar, and my husband rose to ring for the nurse, but it was nurse’s ‘Sunday out,’ and Mary and I were taking her place. Mary picked baby up off the blanket, and holding its cheek to hers, sung softly to it in her low sweet voice. The darling was instantly silent. The effect of my sister’s plaintive melodious voice upon fretful children was magical. I remember once calling with her upon a lady who wished that we should see her baby. The baby was brought into the room, and the moment it saw us it began to yell. My sister stepped up to it as it sat on the nurse’s arm, and looking at it in the face with a smile began to sing, and the infant, silencing its cries, stared back at her with its mouth wide open in the very posture of a scream, but as silent as though it had been a doll. When she ceased to sing and turned from it, it roared again, and again she silenced it by singing. My baby lay hushed in her arms, and the sweet eyes of Mary looked at us over the little fat cheek that she nestled to her throat, and we continued to discourse upon the best place to go to. My husband named a small seaside town, and I could see by the expression of his face he meant that we should go there. It was many years since he had visited it, but he recollected and described the beauties of the scenery of the coast with enthusiasm. It was on the Bristol Channel, at no very considerable distance from the city in which we dwelt, and he said he wished to go there because, should there come a call upon him from the office, he would be able to make the double journey, with plenty of leisure between for all he might have to do, in a day, computing that day from eight till midnight. ‘Oh! it is a beautiful romantic spot, Agnes,’ said he. ‘Its sands, when the water is out, are as firm as this floor. It has high, dark cliffs, magnificently bold and rugged, and when the breaker bursts upon the sand, the cliffs echo its voice, and you seem to hear the note of an approaching tempest.’ ‘But it is a cheerful place, John? Cliffs and sands are very well, but in a month one wearies of cliffs and sands, and in a month again how many days of wet will there be?’ ‘It is cheerful--very,’ said my husband. ‘Its cheerfulness is inborn, like good-nature in a man. It owes nothing of its brightness to excursionists, to steamboats, to Punch and Judy, and to German bands. It has three good streets and a number of clean lodging-houses.’ ‘Has it a pier and a hotel?’ asked Mary.