But, for all this, he was a healthy, hearty baby, with a round bald head, great blue eyes like china marbles, and a ridiculous mouth that would not shut over the pink gums and hide the dimples at the corners.  He did not cry because, as yet, he hadn’t seen the moon, and the lamp had been carefully emptied and given to him as soon as he was big enough to hold out his hands.  Pins had not stuck him, because Eugenia had guarded against the danger by sewing ribbons on his tiny innumerable slips.  And he was as amiable as his elders are apt to be so long as they are permitted to regard the visible universe as a possible plaything.

At this time it was Eugenia’s custom to hold him on her lap while she ate her meals, or to leave Miss Chris in charge if the small tyrant chanced to be asleep.  Miss Chris had become a willing servitor; but she occasionally felt it to be her duty to put a modest check upon Eugenia’s maternal frenzy.

“My dear, there were ten of us,” she remarked one day, “and I am sure we never required as much attention as this one.”

“And nine of you died,” Eugenia solemnly retorted.

Miss Chris was compelled to assent; but she immediately added:  “Not until we had reached middle age.  Belinda died youngest, and it was of pneumonia, at the age of forty-one.  You don’t think neglect during her infancy had anything to do with it, do you?  Nobody ever accused my poor dear mother of not looking after her children.”

But Eugenia stood her ground.  “One can never tell,” was all she said, though a moment later she wiped her eyes and sobbed:  “Oh, papa!  If papa could only see him!  He would be so proud.”

“Of course, darling,” said Miss Chris.  “He was always fond of children.  I remember distinctly the way he carried on when his first child was born—­but he lost him of croup before he was a month old.”

She left the room to see after the housekeeping, and Eugenia hugged the baby to her bosom, and cried over him and kissed him, and thought his eyes were like her father’s—­though, for that matter, the general’s were gray and watery, with weak red lids that blinked.  The baby gurgled and showed his gums still more and clutched the lace upon his mother’s breast until it hung in shreds.  It was a new gown, but neither Eugenia nor the baby cared for that—­if he had wanted to pull her hair out, strand by strand, she would have submitted rather than have brought a wrinkle to his cloudless brow.

A little later she took him out upon the sidewalk, after swathing him from head to foot in a light-blue veil that floated about her like a strip of sky.  It was here that Juliet Galt found her, as she was passing, and, throwing back her pretty head, she laughed until the tears came.

“O Eugie, Eugie, if you had six!” she gasped.

Eugenia flinched slightly at her merriment.  “But, Juliet, I can’t trust him with a nurse.  Why, you told me only the other day that your faithful old Fanny called Elizabeth an ‘imp of Satan.’”