“I think you should not have encouraged levity in the boy,” said he. “I wouldn’t have the idea put into his head that men and women are created to dance.” “But, Shone, they are only paper.” “Paper or flesh and blood is all the same. They are dancing. I don’t like it. You can’t be too careful with a child. It’s just when they’re young that they take in ideas, as they do nourishment—they suck it in in buckets.” “How would you have me cut them out?—walking to chapel?” “That would be better.” “Shone, if I do that, I must make them prance. One cannot cut out these paper men and women without giving them high action. You would not have a whole train of them prancing to church like war-horses!” The fact of the case was that Shone was slightly jealous. His child had taken to Shian, he clung to her, dabbed his little mouth over her cheek—in kisses, and was distinctly more happy with her than with his father. Shone was conscious of it, and fought against it. He reasoned with himself; but could not reason himself out of his jealousy. Had his child not put on fat, not gained in colour—had it become peevish, he would have blamed the young woman, and taken it away. But when not only Ebenezer, but also the “committee,” and his own consciousness assured him that all was well with the infant—better than it had been when it lived half its time underground—then he could not withdraw it from Shian, save for those hours when he was free from work. So matters went on for a while, and then the situation became aggravated, for the child began to cry when he took it in his arms to remove it, and stretched forth its little hands to Shian, and sobbed, and would not be comforted by the father. It fretted when at home, it screamed, moaned, was restless. Shone thought it must be ill, and consulted a doctor; he battled against the assurance that nothing ailed the child, save its temporary separation from the woman who was as a mother to it. He worked himself into excitement against Shian; she was stealing his child’s heart from him. But his good sense returned. She was not willingly doing this. It was due to the irresistible. The natural nurse of a babe is a woman, and not a man, and the child instinctively clings to the nurse. “I pay her six shillings for it,” grumbled Shone. “He ought to understand that she is a hireling and not his mother.” This he said to the doctor, to whom, perhaps unguardedly, he had let out what embittered his heart. “Quite so, Evans,” answered the surgeon. “But as the child has not as yet reached the age of reason in which it can draw such distinctions, why do you not make Shian its mother?” Shone opened his eyes, stared at his adviser, turned his back, and walked away. But the advice stuck. Here was a solution to the difficulty, yet not one very pleasing to the collier. He brooded over his wrong, and also over the redress that lay open to him. Not a word could be said against Shian. She was a quiet, hard-working, steady girl.