ish man made an attempt to chassée across the room, to the no small amazement of his daughter. "I must tell mother," said she, "his joy is making him lose his wits."
Mr. Bangs, in due time, was asked up to Fanny's room, into which he walked on tiptoe, giggling. But when he got a glimpse of the baby, his cheek was flushed, and his lip quivered. It seemed as if all the feelings of a father had been pent up till that moment; for when the nurse put the little boy in his arms, he tenderly kissed it, and, "lifting up his face, he wept aloud."
Mr. Floss was kneeling by his wife, and blessing her every moment between his grateful prayers; this sudden burst therefore of the old man was not surprising, but it was to his wife. As to Hannah French, she laughed so loud at the oddity of it, that Mrs. Bangs fearing that their hubbub would be injurious to her daughter, made them both go out of the room; but Hannah French laughed by snatches for the remainder of the day.
"Adieu to business and to clubs now. The boy has been so long coming," said he to his wife, "and no thanks to you, that I shall make myself amends for my thirteen disappointments, and having to wait seven years too, in the bargain."
So he staid nearly all the time in the nursery, and waited for the development of growth and intellect with the most intense and feverish anxiety. Every day he pulled the little fellow's mouth open to look for a tooth, and when it came at last, which it did at the end of six months, he tore himself from the pleasure of looking at it, to rush out among his old friends to make them as happy as himself.
The first that he saw was one of his club companions, for he consorted with no others. This person was just coming up the street from the river.
