The child was shown, still asleep. A cunning infant not a cry in him to excuse a father for preferring concord or silence or the bachelor’s exemption. ‘He is a strong boy,’ the mother said. ‘Our doctor promises he will ride over all the illnesses.’ Fleetwood’s answer set off with an alarum of the throat, and dwindled to ‘We ‘ll hope so. Seems to sleep well.’ She had her rocky brows. They were not barren crags, and her shape was Nature’s ripeness, it was acknowledged: She stood like a lance in air-rather like an Amazon schooled by Athene, one might imagine. Hues of some going or coming flush hinted the magical trick of her visage. She spoke in modest manner, or it might be indifferently, without a flaunting of either. ‘I wish to consult you, my lord. He is not baptized. His Christian names?’ ‘I have no choice.’ ‘I should wish him to bear one of my brother’s names.’ ‘I have no knowledge of your brother’s names.’ ‘Chillon is one.’ ‘Ah! Is it, should you think, suitable to our climate?’ ‘Another name of my brother’s is John.’ ‘Bull.’ The loutish derision passed her and rebounded on him. ‘That would be quite at home.’ ‘You will allow one of your own names, my lord?’ ‘Oh, certainly, if you desire it, choose. There are four names you will find in a book of the Peerage or Directory or so. Up at the castle--or you might have written:--better than these questions on the public road. I don’t demur. Let it be as you like.’ ‘I write empty letters to tell what I much want,’ Carinthia said. ‘You have only to write your plain request.’ ‘If, now I see you, I may speak another request, my lord.’ ‘Pray,’ he said, with courteous patience, and stepped forward down to the street of the miners’ cottages. She could there speak out-bawl the request, if it suited her to do so. On the point of speaking, she gazed round. ‘Perfectly safe! no harm possible,’ said he, fretful under the burden of this her maniacal maternal anxiety. ‘The men are all right, they would not hurt a child. What can rationally be suspected!’ ‘I know the men; they love their children,’ she replied. ‘I think my child would be precious to them. Mr. Woodseer and Mr. Edwards and Madge are there.’ ‘Is the one more request--I mean, a mother’s anxiety does not run to the extent of suspecting everybody?’ ‘Some of the children are very pretty,’ said Carinthia, and eyed the bands of them at their games in the roadway and at the cottage doors. ‘Children of the poor have happy mothers.’ Her eyes were homely, morning over her face. They were open now to what that fellow Woodseer (who could speak to the point when he was not aiming at it) called the parlour, or social sitting-room; where we may have converse with the tame woman’s mind, seeing the door to the clawing recesses temporarily shut. ‘Forgive me if I say you talk like the bigger child,’ Fleetwood said lightly, not ungenially; for the features he looked on were museful, a picture in their one expression.