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slowly, reassured, for if
Thomazine said a thing would be so she would move heaven and earth to make it
so. “All proceeds as it should, Russell,” she said, and disentangled his hand
from hers and pushed his loose, fear-sweaty hair out of his eyes. “Come back to
bed, and be comforted.”
     
     
    8
     
    Frances Pettitt was the lighter of a
daughter, by dawn, and the house was buzzing like an upturned ant's nest.
    Het was crumpled
and teary-eyed, reminded of her own babies, all grown up now, and she said the
little mite was the loveliest thing she had ever seen. Uncle Luce said he had
half a mind to have the child christened Rosamund, the Rose of the World. And
Thomazine's father, who looked a little misty-eyed himself, muttered darkly
that he'd only ever thought Luce had had half a mind at the best of times, and
to give the poor little mite a sensible name, in all charity.
    "Like
Thomazine, you mean?" Luce said tartly, bouncing the little bundle of
spotless drapery in his arms, and the infant gave a tiny mew, like a sleepy
kitten, and nestled against her father.
    She caught her
father's eye, and he smiled, and scratched at his cinnamon stubble. "I'm
happy with Thomazine," he said softly. "Now, lass, I'd never have
suspected that man of yours of idleness. Is he likely to appear before
breakfast, to admire this child prodigy?"
    She had left him
sleeping, as it happened. Did not know what he might make of a new baby,
whether he would turn sentimental, or be timid, or distant. Did not, in all
truth, know if he liked children or not, for themselves, and not as merely a
means to continue a name. There was a deal she did not know about Thankful
Russell.
    - had not known
his given name was Thankful-for-His-Deliverance, until yesterday, for one
thing, and the memory of that rather ludicrously godly and well-concealed
Christian name lightened her mood suddenly. But yes. She had known him all her
life, and yet there was still so much she didn’t know about him. Well, this was
one thing she could discover for herself.
    "A
what?" he said muzzily, without opening his eyes.
    "A baby.
Uncle Luce's baby. She -"
    He sat up then,
and slithered out of bed just as he was, as bare as an egg, and gone casting
about the room for his clothes, and ended by bounding downstairs barefoot, a
solitary stocking trailing anyhow from his pocket. " She ? He has a
daughter? Oh, bravely done, Frances! About time!"
    - He liked
children, then, she thought, following in his wake. And the baby, being a
matter of hours old, and not objecting at so tender an age to being passed from
pillar to post like a little parcel, had not been frightened by his marred
cheek, but had simply lay cuddled in the crook of his arm and looked up at him
with unfocussed blue eyes.
    Russell had
looked at Thomazine, and Thomazine had looked at Russell, and an unspoken
understanding had passed between them. And she had not cared who might see the
look of dazed joy on his face, or the tenderness on hers.
    It was a fragile
understanding at best, though, and not the sort of thing that could be shared
in a room full of people, and a nursing mother upstairs, and all the talk of
the new one's beauty - how she might have Luce's height, such long legs for a
tiny wee one, and wasn't she a sweet poppet, and did you see, so young, and she
smiled, truly she did, and did you think she would be dark like her mammy or
fair like her father -
    Russell handed
the child back to Luce, with an air of one having successfully carried off a
frightening duty, and absented himself to his wife's side. "They don’t
break," she said out of the corner of her mouth, "unless you drop
them on their heads."
    "So
small!" he murmured, and there was an edge of marvel to his voice that
made her look at him sharply, and found him still with his hand cupped as if he
were still cradling the child's head. She moved her foot against his and gave
him a shove.
    "Russell,
people will think you are a mooncalf. Have you never held a