The young mother was sitting in an American rocking-chair, her baby in her lap. The little creature stared at her in that peculiar way which infants do when they are being "amused." It wasn't altogether a meaningless stare, for what it meant was very obvious indeed; this peculiar look is a threat, and may be translated thus: "If you do not give me your entire attention, and become thoroughly absorbed in me, I will rend the air with eldritch screams, and my piercing cries shall give you the headache you deserve." "I think I was making a fool of myself, Reginald," said young Mrs. Haggard; "I certainly was predicting all sorts of good fortune for him, in baby language." "Yes, baby language as you call it, is one of women's ridiculous fads; the child learns it, and he'll have to unlearn it again to pick up the Queen's English. You don't mean to say that you believe in palmistry, Georgie?" continued Haggard. "Well, everybody says there's something in it, Reginald; besides, it's only an old belief revived, and it's better fun than spirit-rapping, thought-reading, or Madam Blavatsky." The husband sat down, and critically inspected the child. "Poor little devil!" he said; "he's like a young bear with all his troubles to come. I'll tell you his fortune, Georgie. If he's got brains he'll have to go and live in the Law Courts, pinching and screwing to make both ends meet, starving his belly to feed his back, working early and late, and hoping for the briefs that never come. Perhaps he'll drift into something, or finding that he can't earn a farthing he may turn paper stainer in despair, and gradually get a crust by writing dull farces or novels that nobody reads; in fact he may become a modern Grub Street free lance. If he is a humbug he'll go into the Church; or he may want to wear a red coat, or a blue one, and vegetate on his pay and the trifle he would get from me." "Poor little fellow," said his wife; "but what has he done to be disinherited?" "He's committed the crime of existing, my dear," replied the husband. "Can't you see, dear, that every farthing we have in the world will have to go to Lucius, for he will be the head of the family. Gad," he said, "he may be a peer of the realm, though that's a rather unlikely contingency. This child, Georgie, is not born in the purple, as is his elder brother; the one is clay, the other china." The young mother nervously clutched the child to her breast and smothered him with kisses. "Make the most of him, my dear, lavish your affection upon him. Unless the squire means doing something for him, his fortune is what I have predicted. Younger sons in England, George, have to live on monkey's allowance--more kicks than halfpence, and if there are half-a-dozen more of them, poor little chaps, the fewer halfpence they will get and the more kicks."