"But, my dear Mrs. Walton," she was saying, "you'll be having all the
tramps in England leaving their babies at your door."
"The better for the babies," interposed I, laughing.
"But you don't think of your wife, Mr. Walton."
"Don't I? I thought I did," I returned dryly.
"Depend upon it, you'll repent it."
"I hope I shall never repent of anything but what is bad."
"Ah! but, really! it's not a thing to be made game of."
"Certainly not. The baby shall be treated with all due respect in this
house."
"What a provoking man you are! You know what I mean well enough."
"As well as I choose to know--certainly," I answered.
This lady was one of my oldest parishioners, and took liberties for which
she had no other justification, except indeed an unhesitating belief in the
superior rectitude of whatever came into her own head can be counted
as one. When she was gone, my wife turned to me with a half-comic,
half-anxious look, and said:
"But it would be rather alarming, Harry, if this were to get abroad, and
we couldn't go out at the door in the morning without being in danger of
stepping on a baby on the door-step."
"You might as well have said, when you were going to be married, 'If God
should send me twenty children, whatever should I do?' He who sent us this
one can surely prevent any more from coming than he wants to come.
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