she would as soon have thought of taking pleasure in dozing off with
any little roll of linen clasped in her arms. It was rather singular,
for she had a vivid imagination, but it had balked at a doll. When,
as sometimes happened, she saw a little girl of her own age, wheeling
with solemnity a doll in a go-cart, she viewed her with amazement and
contempt, and thought privately that she was not altogether bright.
But this baby was different. It did not have to be laid on its back
to make its eyes close, it did not have to be shaken and squeezed to
make it vociferous. It was alive, and Maria, who was unusually alive
in her emotional nature, was keenly aware of that effect. This
little, tender, rosy thing was not stuffed with sawdust, it was
stuffed with soul and love. It could smile; the smile was not painted
on its face in a doll-factory. Maria was so thankful that this baby,
Ida's baby, did not have Her smile, unchanging and permanent for all
observers and all vicissitudes. When this baby smiled it smiled, and
when it cried it cried. It was honest from the crown of its fuzzy
head to the soles of its little pink worsted socks.

At the first reception which Ida gave after the baby came, and when
it was on exhibition in a hand-embroidered robe, it screamed every
minute. Maria was secretly glad, and proud of it. It meant much to
her that _her_ baby should not smile at all the company, whether it
was smiling in its heart or not, the way She did. Maria had no room
in her heart for any other love, except that for her father and the
baby. She looked at Wollaston Lee, and wondered how she could ever
have had dreams about him, how she could ever have preferred a boy to
a baby like her little sister, even in her dreams. She ceased
haunting the post-office for a letter from that other boy in New
England, who had asked her to correspond over the garden fence, and
who had either never written at all, or had misdirected his letter.