of splendid sons! Thus through all those summer months she sat and watched the hills, and Sir Philip would sit with her—they would sit hand in hand. And because she felt grateful she gave much to the poor, and Sir Philip went to church, which was seldom his custom, and the Vicar came to dinner, and just towards the end many matrons called to give good advice to Anna.
But: ‘Man proposes—God disposes', and so it happened that on Christmas Eve, Anna Gordon was delivered of a daughter; a narrow-hipped, wide-shouldered little tadpole of a baby, that yelled and yelled for three hours without ceasing, as though outraged to find itself ejected into life.
2
Anna Gordon held her child to her breast, but she grieved while it drank, because of her man who had longed so much for a son. And seeing her grief. Sir Philip hid his chagrin, and he fondled the baby and examined its fingers.
'What a hand!' he would say. 'Why it’s actually got nails on all its ten fingers: little, perfect, pink nails!'
Then Anna would dry her eyes and caress it, kissing the tiny hand.
He insisted on calling the infant Stephen, nay more, he would have it baptized by that name. 'We've called her Stephen so long,' he told Anna, ‘that I really can’t see why we shouldn’t go on—'
Anna felt doubtful, but Sir Philip was stubborn, as he could be at times over whims.
The Vicar said that it was rather unusual, so to mollify him they must add female names. The child was baptized in the village church as Stephen Mary Olivia Gertrude—and she throve, seeming strong, and when her hair grew it was seen to be auburn like Sir Philip’s. There was also a tiny cleft in her chin, so small just at first that it looked like a shadow; and after a while when her eyes lost the blueness that is proper to puppies and other young things, Anna saw that her eyes were going to be hazel—and thought that their expression was her father’s. On the whole she was quite a well-behaved baby, owing, no doubt, to a fine constitution. Beyond that first energetic protest at birth she had done very little howling.
It was happy to have a baby at Morton, and the old house seemed
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