Section 3. But there were ups as well as downs in this tenting
adventure. There came glorious days, when they took long tramps over the
hills; or when Thyrsis would carry the child upon his shoulder, and they
would wander about the meadows, picking daisies and clover, and making
garlands for Corydon. Once Cedric sat down upon a bumble-bee, and that
was hard upon him, and perhaps upon the bee. But for the most part the
little one was enraptured during these excursions. He was fascinated
with the flowers, and continually seeking for an opportunity to devour
some of them; while he was doing it he would wear such a roguish
smile--it was impossible not to believe that he understood the agitation
which these abnormal appetites occasioned in his parents. Corydon would
be seized with a sudden access of affection, and she would clutch him in
her arms and squeeze him, and fairly smother him with kisses. Of course
the youngster would protest wildly at this, and so not infrequently the
demonstration would end tragically.
“I can’t have any joy in my baby at all!” she would lament; and
Thyrsis would have to soothe the child, and plead with her to find more
practical ways of demonstrating her maternal devotion.
Cedric was beginning to make determined efforts to talk now, and he had
the most original names for things. His parents would adopt these into
their own speech, which thus departed rapidly from established usage.
They had to bring themselves to realize that if they went on in that
fashion, the child would never learn to speak so that any one else could
understand him. The grandmothers were most strenuous upon this point,
and would laboriously explain to the infant that chickens and pigeons
and sparrows were not all known as “ducky-ducks”; they would plead with
it to say “bottle of milk”, while its reckless parents were delighting
themselves with such perversions as “bobbu mookie-mook.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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