“It is a crying shame if he doesn’t,” said Jeannie. “It is the easiest thing in the world to make that child crow with delight. If you laugh, he laughs. Oh, we mustn’t talk so loud. We’ve awoke him.” Jeannie slipped softly to the side of the cot and began crooning a little baby-song: “Black grow the blackberries, Cherries are red, But golden are the curls That grow on baby’s head. “All the ladies in the land Come to see the show, But baby went on sleeping And baby did not know.” Jack watched her intently, and a sudden thrill of passion throbbed in him. There was something in the sight of the girl bending over the baby and crooning in that low voice that stirred all his nature. Her exquisite fitness there, her absorbing joy in the young thing was a flash of revelation to him. Her dormant potential motherhood suddenly became divine and real to him. Every vein in his body seemed to have sent all the blood it contained in one great bound to his heart, and it stood still on the top of its beat. A long-drawn breath hung suspended in his lungs, and it was as if every particle of the warm, brisk air of the nursery was bubbling intoxicating fire. The next moment all that was within him bowed and fell and worshipped. That moment of incorporeal existence must have been short, for Jeannie had not got to the end of the second silly little verse when he was aware of himself again, like a man who has come round after an anæsthetic, feeling as if he had travelled swiftly from very far away. But he did not come back to his normal consciousness; the world he awoke to was different, and Jeannie filled it. Almost simultaneously the nurse came softly in, and Jeannie got up quietly. “He is sleeping again now,” she said; “step gently, Mr. Collingwood.” It was long past dressing time, and they went straight to their rooms. During dinner Miss Fortescue was unusually vitriolic, and afterward they played a game called Adverbs. Jack had only a confused recollection of going out of the room, and being totally unable to guess what was required of him on his return. Soon after this Jeannie and her aunt went upstairs. Jack must have been really idiotic about the game, for Miss Fortescue looked at him anxiously as she shook hands. “I think you must have overworked yourself,” she said. “Be careful.” She took several turns up and down her bed-room before ringing for her maid. As she pulled the bell: “Head over ears,” she remarked. CHAPTER XIV Long-continued drought had marked this summer-time, and when in September no rain fell the papers had been full of acrimonious comments on the ways of water-companies. The water-company at fault was really no earthly controller, and the most intelligent body of men can not milk the clouds. But the British public is not happy without its grievance, and just now it was certainly enjoying itself immensely.