gurgle of the nurses, he could swear. He kicked at the bondage to our
common fleshly nature imposed on him by the mother of the little animal.
But there had been a mother to his father: odd movements of a warmish
curiosity brushed him when the cynic was not mounting guard. They were,
it seemed, external--no part of him: like blasts of a wayside furnace
across wintry air. They were, as it chanced, Nature's woman in him
plucking at her separated partner, Custom's man; something of an oriental
voluptuary on his isolated regal seat; and he would suck the pleasures
without a descent into the stale old ruts where Life's convict couple
walk linked to one another, to their issue more.

There was also a cold curiosity to see the male infant such a mother
would have. The grandson of Old Lawless might turn out a rascal,--he
would be no mean one, no coward.

That mother, too, who must have been a touch astonished to find herself a
mother:--Fleetwood laughed a curt bark, and heard rebukes, and pleaded
the marriage-trap to the man of his word; devil and cherub were at the
tug, or say, dog and gentleman, a survival of the schoolboy--that mother,
a girl of the mountains, perhaps wanted no more than smoothing by the
world. 'It is my husband' sounded foolish, sounded freshish,--a new
note. Would she repeat it? The bit of simplicity would bear repeating
once. Gower Woodseer says the creature grows and studies to perfect
herself. She's a good way off that, and may spoil herself in the
process; but she has a certain power. Her donkey obstinacy in refusing
compliance, and her pursuit of 'my husband,' and ability to drench him
with ridicule, do not exhibit the ordinary young female. She stamps her
impression on the people she meets. Her husband is shaken to confess it
likewise, despite a disagreement between them.