"Oh, didn't she! Children are such funny things. I stole away to have a look at her later on, and did not hear him come after me. She looked so sweet, and she was smiling in her sleep. I believe the Irish peasantry say that an angel is whispering when a baby does that. I had given up all belief myself, except the belief in a Creator who is working out some system that is too infinite for our finite minds to grasp. If one looks round with seeing eyes, one can't help thinking that after a run of eighteen hundred and ninety-three years Christianity is not very consoling in its results. But at that moment, kneeling next the cradle, I felt a strange, solemn feeling stealing over me: one is conscious of the same effect in a grand cathedral filled with the peal of organ music and soaring voices. It was as if all the old, sweet, untroubled child-belief came back for a spell, and I wondered if far back in the Nazarene village Mary ever knelt and watched the Christ-child sleep; and the legend of how he was often seen to weep but never to smile came back to me, and I think the sorrow I felt as I thought was an act of contrition and faith. I could not teach a child scepticism; so I remembered my husband prayed, and I resolved to ask him to teach her. You see [half hesitatingly] I have more brains, or at least more intellectuality, than my husband; and in that case one is apt to undervalue simpler, perhaps greater, qualities. That came home to me, and I began to cry, I don't know why; and he lifted me up, and I think I said something of the kind to him. We got nearer to each other someway. He said it was unlucky to cry over a child. "It made such a difference in the evenings! I used to hurry home,--I was on the staff of the 'World's Review' just then; and it was so jolly to see the quaint little phiz smile up when I went in. "Belinda was quite jealous of George. She said 'Master worritted in an' out, an' interfered with everything; she never seen a man as knew so much about babies, not for one as never 'ad none of 'is own. Wot if he didn't go to Parkins hisself, an' say as how she was to have the milk of one cow, an' mind not mix it!' I wish you could have seen the insinuating distrust on Belinda's face. I laughed. I believe we were all getting too serious; I know I felt years younger. I told George that it was really suspicious: how did he acquire such a stock of baby lore? _I_ hadn't any. It was all very well to say 'Aunt Mary's kids.' I should never be surprised if I saw a Zwazi woman appear with a lot of tawny pickaninnies in tow. George was shocked! I often shock him.