Lucy shook her head, looking sly and shy.

“That’s right.  We’ll give him a surprise; let it come all at once on him, and thinks he—­losin’ breath ‘I’m a father!’ Nor a hint even you haven’t give him?”

Lucy kissed her, to indicate it was quite a secret.

“Oh! you are a sweet one,” said Bessy Berry, and rocked her more closely and lovingly.

Then these two had a whispered conversation, from which let all of male persuasion retire a space nothing under one mile.

Returning, after a due interval, we see Mrs. Berry counting on her fingers’ ends.  Concluding the sum, she cries prophetically:  “Now this right everything—­a baby in the balance!  Now I say this angel-infant come from on high.  It’s God’s messenger, my love! and it’s not wrong to say so.  He thinks you worthy, or you wouldn’t ’a had one—­not for all the tryin’ in the world, you wouldn’t, and some tries hard enough, poor creatures!  Now let us rejice and make merry!  I’m for cryin’ and laughin’, one and the same.  This is the blessed seal of matrimony, which Berry never stamp on me.  It’s be hoped it’s a boy.  Make that man a grandfather, and his grandchild a son, and you got him safe.  Oh! this is what I call happiness, and I’ll have my tea a little stronger in consequence.  I declare I could get tipsy to know this joyful news.”

So Mrs. Berry carolled.  She had her tea a little stronger.  She ate and she drank; she rejoiced and made merry.  The bliss of the chaste was hers.

Says Lucy demurely:  “Now you know why I read History, and that sort of books.”

“Do I?” replies Berry.  “Belike I do.  Since what you done’s so good, my darlin’, I’m agreeable to anything.  A fig for all the lords!  They can’t come anigh a baby.  You may read Voyages and Travels, my dear, and Romances, and Tales of Love and War.  You cut the riddle in your own dear way, and that’s all I cares for.”

“No, but you don’t understand,” persists Lucy.  “I only read sensible books, and talk of serious things, because I’m sure... because I have heard say...dear Mrs. Berry! don’t you understand now?”

Mrs. Berry smacked her knees.  “Only to think of her bein’ that thoughtful! and she a Catholic, too!  Never tell me that people of one religion ain’t as good as another, after that.  Why, you want to make him a historian, to be sure!  And that rake of a lord who’ve been comin’ here playin’ at wolf, you been and made him—­unbeknown to himself—­sort o’ tutor to the unborn blessed!  Ha! ha! say that little women ain’t got art ekal to the cunningest of ’em.  Oh!  I understand.  Why, to be sure, didn’t I know a lady, a widow of a clergyman:  he was a postermost child, and afore his birth that women read nothin’ but Blair’s ‘Grave’ over and over again, from the end to the beginnin’;—­that’s a serious book!—­very hard readin’!—­and at four years of age that child that come of it reelly was the piousest infant!—­he was like a little curate.  His eyes was up; he talked so solemn.”  Mrs. Berry imitated the little curate’s appearance and manner of speaking.  “So she got her wish, for one!”