After the nurse and baby had left the mill, Mrs. Lake showered extra
caresses upon the little Jan. It had given her a strange pleasure
to see him in contact with the Squire's child. She knew enough of
the manners and customs, the looks and the intelligence of the
children of educated parents, to be aware that there were "makings"
in those who were born heirs to developed intellects, and the grace
that comes of discipline, very different from the "makings" to be
found in the "voolish" descendants of ill-nurtured and uneducated
generations. She had no philosophical--hardly any reasonable or
commendable--thoughts about it. But she felt that Jan's countenance
and his "ways" justified her first belief that he was "gentry born."

She was proud of his pretty manners. Indeed, curiously enough, she
had recalled her old memories of nursery etiquette under a first-
rate upper nurse in "her young days," to apply them to the little
Jan's training.

Why she had not done this with her own children is a question that
cannot perhaps be solved till we know why so many soldiers, used
for, it may be, a quarter of a century to personal cleanliness as
scrupulous as a gentleman's, and to enforced neatness of clothes,
rooms, and general habits, take back to dirt and slovenliness with
greediness when they leave the service; and why many a nurse, whose
voice and manners were beyond reproach in her mistress's nursery,
brings up her own children in after life on the village system of
bawling, banging, threatening, cuddling, stuffing, smacking, and
coarse language, just as if she had never experienced the better
discipline attainable by gentle firmness and regular habits.

Mrs. Lake had a small satisfaction in Jan's brief and limited