Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Sylvia's Lovers — Volume 3 by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
page 15 of 224 (06%)
to her. All the old ways of holding a baby, of hushing it to sleep,
of tenderly guarding its little limbs from injury, came back, like
the habits of her youth, to Bell; and she was never so happy or so
easy in her mind, or so sensible and connected in her ideas, as when
she had Sylvia's baby in her arms.

It was a pretty sight to see, however familiar to all of us such
things may be--the pale, worn old woman, in her quaint,
old-fashioned country dress, holding the little infant on her knees,
looking at its open, unspeculative eyes, and talking the little
language to it as though it could understand; the father on his
knees, kept prisoner by a small, small finger curled round his
strong and sinewy one, and gazing at the tiny creature with
wondering idolatry; the young mother, fair, pale, and smiling,
propped up on pillows in order that she, too, might see the
wonderful babe; it was astonishing how the doctor could come and go
without being drawn into the admiring vortex, and look at this baby
just as if babies came into the world every day.

'Philip,' said Sylvia, one night, as he sate as still as a mouse in
her room, imagining her to be asleep. He was by her bed-side in a
moment.

'I've been thinking what she's to be called. Isabella, after mother;
and what were yo'r mother's name?'

'Margaret,' said he.

'Margaret Isabella; Isabella Margaret. Mother's called Bell. She
might be called Bella.'
DigitalOcean Referral Badge