The woman held her peace. She could not, even to herself, call him a
child pleasant to look at. She gazed on him for a moment with pitiful,
protective eyes, then covered his face as if he were dead, but she did
not move.

"Why don't you go?" said the baronet.

Instead of replying, she began, as by a suddenly confirmed resolve, to
remove the coverings at the other end of the bundle, and presently
disclosed the baby's feet. The baronet gazed wondering. To what might
not assurance be about to subject him? She took one of the little feet
in a hard but gentle hand, and spreading out "the pink, five-beaded
baby-toes," displayed what even the inexperience of the baronet could not
but recognize as remarkable: between every pair of toes was stretched a
thin delicate membrane. She laid the foot down, took up the other, and
showed the same peculiarity. The child was web-footed, as distinctly as
any properly constituted duckling! Then she lifted, one after the other,
the tiny hands, beautiful to any eye that understood, and showed between
the middle and third finger of each, the same sort of membrane rising
half-way to the points of them.

"I see!" said the baronet, with a laugh that was not nice, having in it
no merriment, "the creature is a monster!--Well, if you think I am to
blame, I can only protest you are mistaken. _I_ am not web-footed! The
duckness must come from the other side."

"I hope you will remember, sir Wilton!"

"Remember? What do you mean? Take the monster away."