“That we do, ma’am. And many another thing too, though Miss Charlotte tells me I’m not to beg of the ladies that comes to see our poor darlin’s.”

“Oh, you may beg of me, Bridget,” Mrs. Ralston answered, smiling. “Let me see your babies—it’s so long since I’ve been here.”

The children had stopped playing and, huddled against their nurse, gazed up open-mouthed at the rich rustling lady. One little girl with pale brown eyes and scarlet cheeks was dressed in a plaid alpaca frock trimmed with imitation coral{50} buttons that Delia remembered. Those buttons had been on Charlotte’s “best dress” the year she came out. Delia stopped and took up the child. Its curly hair was brown, the exact colour of the eyes—thank heaven! But the eyes had the same little green spangles floating in their transparency. Delia sat down, and the little girl, standing on her knee, gravely fingered her watch-chain.

{50}

“Oh, ma’am—maybe her shoes’ll soil your skirt. The floor here ain’t none too clean.”

Delia shook her head, and pressed the child against her. She had forgotten the other gazing babies and their wardress. The little creature on her knee was made of different stuff—it had not needed the plaid alpaca and coral buttons to single her out. Her brown curls grew in points on her high forehead, exactly as Clement{51} Spender’s did. Delia laid a burning cheek against the forehead.

{51}

“Baby want my lovely yellow chain?”

Baby did.

Delia unfastened the gold chain and hung it about the child’s neck. The other babies clapped and crowed, but the little girl, gravely dimpling, continued to finger the links in silence.

“Oh, ma’am, you can’t leave that fine chain on little Teeny. When she has to go back to those blacks....”

“What is her name?”

“Teena they call her, I believe. It don’t seem a Christian name, har’ly.”

Delia was silent.

“What I say is, her cheeks is too red. And she coughs too easy. Always one cold and another. Here, Teeny, leave the lady go.{52}”

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