The poor wife could be silent no longer.

“The child is well enough,” said she, somewhat stoutly.  “He was never better in his life.  But he wanted his papa to take him, and he wouldn’t; and reaching after him he tipped over the lamp, and then—­and then”—­and here she jumped up to leave the room; but her husband was too quick for her.

“That child’s temper will be ruined,” said papa.

“To be sure it will,” said mamma; “and I’ve always said so.”

She couldn’t help it; but she was very sorry, and not a little flurried when her husband, turning short upon her, said—­

“I understand you, Sarah.  Perhaps he wanted me to take him up to bed?”

No answer.

“I wonder if he expects me to do that for him till he is married? Little arms, indeed!”

No answer.

“Or till he is wanted to do as much for me?”

No answer; not even a smile.

And now the unhappy father, by no means ready to give up, though not at all satisfied with himself, begins walking the floor anew and muttering to himself, and looking sideways at his dear patient wife, who has gone back to the table, and is employed in getting up another large basket of baby-things, with trembling lips and eyes running over in bashful thankfulness and silence.

“Well, well, there is no help for it, I dare say.  As we brew we must bake.  It would be not merely unreasonable, but silly—­foolish—­absolutely foolish—­whew!—­to ask of a woman, however admirable her disposition may be, for a—­for a straightforward—­Why what the plague are you laughing at, Sarah?  What have you got there?”

Without saying a word, mamma pushed over towards him a new French caricature, just out, representing a man well wrapped up in a great coat with large capes, and long boots, and carrying an umbrella over his own head, from which is pouring a puddle of water down the back of a delicate fashionable woman—­his wife, anybody might know—­wearing thin slippers and a very thin muslin dress, and making her way through the gutters on tip-toe, with the legend, “You are never satisfied!” “Tu n’est jamais contente!”

Instead of gulping down the joke, and laughing heartily—­or making believe laugh, which is the next best thing, in all such cases—­papa stood upon his dignity, and, after an awful pause, went on talking to himself pretty much as follows:—­

“According to Shakspeare—­and what higher authority can we have?—­reputation itself is but a bubble, blown by the cannon’s mouth:  and therefore do I say, and stick to it—­hurrah for bubbles!”

The young wife smiled; but her eyes were fixed upon a very small cap, with a mournful and touching expression, and her delicate fingers were busy upon its border with that regular, steady, incessant motion which, beginning soon after marriage, ends only with sickness or death.

“And,” continued papa—­“and, if Moore is to be believed, the great world itself, with all its wonders and its glories—­the past, the present, and the future, is but a ‘fleeting show.’”