He watched the nurse, then, and her maternal acts with a curious and
grateful eye, and a certain reverence for her power.
He observed, too, that his child reacted on the woman: she had never
sung in the house before; now she sang ravishingly--sang, in low,
mellow, yet sonorous notes, some ditties that had lulled mediaeval
barons in their cradles.
And what had made her vocal made her beautiful at times.
Before, she had appeared to him a handsome girl, with the hardish look
of the lower classes; but now, when she sat in a sunny window, and
lowered her black lashes on her nursling, with the mixed and delicious
smile of an exuberant nurse relieving and relieved, she was soft,
poetical, sculptorial, maternal, womanly.
This species of contemplation, though half philosophical, half
paternal, and quite innocent, gave Lady Bassett some severe pangs.
She hid them, however; only she bided her time, and then suggested the
propriety of weaning baby.
But Mrs. Gosport got Sir Charles's ear, and told him what magnificent
children they reared in her village by not weaning infants till they
were eighteen months old or so.
By this means, and by crying to Lady Bassett, and representing her
desolate condition with a husband at sea, she obtained a reprieve,
coupled, however, with a good-humored assurance from Sir Charles that
she was the greatest baby of the two.
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