lay the Man. W. V. gazed, reddened, looked at mother, looked at me, laughed softly, and gave expression to her feelings in a prolonged "Well!"
"You kiss him first, dear, and we'll let the little man get to sleep. He's come a long way, and is very tired."
A darling, a little gem, a dear wee man! She "wanted a boy!" How shockingly ecstatic it all was! For days her thoughts were constantly playing round him. She even forgot to give Tan his biscuits. "Even when I am an old lady I shall always be six and a half years older than Guy; and when Guy is a little old man he will be six and a half years younger than me." The very fire revealed itself in the guise of motherhood: "It has its arms about its baby." Cross-questioned by deponent: "Why, the log is the baby, father. And the fire has yellowy arms."
This was the chance, I thought, of helping her to realize Bethlehem. "The donkey and the cow would be kind to Guy, wouldn't they? They would let no one touch him." "Was Jesus very tiny and pink, too?" "And was God quite pink and tiny?" When I explained that God was not born, had never been a baby at all—"Oh, poor little boy!"
Out of the ox and the ass and Gelert and Guy she speedily made herself a wonderful drama. Watching her round the corner of my book, I saw the following puppet-play enacted, with some subdued mimetic sounds, but without a spoken word.
Dramatis Personæ.
A doll, a cardboard dog, a horse ditto.
Scene I. The doll gets a ride on the dog's back; the horse runs whinnying round the meadow.
Scene II. The doll asleep; the dog and horse watching. Enter the serpent (a string of beads); crawls stealthily to the doll. The dog barks and bites. The horse jumps on the serpent. The doll wakes. Saved!
To stand and gaze at the Man is bliss; to hold him on her lap for a moment is very heaven. "Tell me what you saw when you came down," she prayed him; but the Man never blinked an eyelid (babes and alligators share this weird faculty). Mother suggested: "I saw a snow-cloud, so I made haste before the snow came." W. V. "guesses" that when she came she saw many lovely things, but unhappily she has forgotten them.
My daughter's admiration of my great gifts has always been exhilarating to me. Time was when I cudgeled the loud wind for clattering her windows, and saw that malignant stones and obdurate wood and iron were condignly chastised for hurting her. No one has so much mechanical genius for the mending of her dolls and slain soldiers; no one can tell her such good stories as I; no one makes up such funny poems. Now she contrasted her voice with mine—alas! she cannot sing Guy to sleep. Well, let us make a new song and try together:
The creatures are all at rest,
The lark in his grassy furrow,
The crow in his faggoty nest,
And Bunny's asleep in his burrow;
But this little boy
He is no longer his mother's joy,
For he will not, will not, will not, will not,
will not go to sleep!
Oh yes, if we sing with gentle patience and a sweet diminuendo, he always does go to sleep—in the long run.
I do not think there is anything she would not do for the Man. "Father, you will always be a stanch friend to Guy?" Why, naturally, and so must she; she must love him, and help him, and guide him, and be good to him all her life, for there is only one Guy and one W. V. in all the world. She has now caught hold of the notion of the little mother, of considerateness, thoughtfulness, helpfulness, self-denial, self-sacrifice.
Yesterday the little Man noticed a bird painted on a plate and put out his hand. "Fly out, little bird, to Guy!" cried W. V. It was a pretty fancy, and I wrote:
IN CHINA.
With wings green and black and a daffodil breast,
He flies day and night; without song, without rest;
Through summer, through winter—the cloudy, the clear—
Encircling the sun in the round of the year.
But now that it's April and shiny; oh, now
That nests are a-building, and bloom's on the bough,
Alight, pretty rover, and get you a mate—
Our almond's in blossom—fly out of the plate!
But this was not at all successful. There were no almonds in blossom, and it should have been, "Fly out to Guy!"
No almonds in blossom! I know the oaks are "in feathers," as W. V. says, and the Forest is full of snow; yet I feel that the almond is in blossom too.
