Lendle

UNTIL the a'bus stopped and the old gentleman entered, we had been a contented and genial company, travelling from a suburb into the city in high, good fellowship, and our absolute monarch was Baby. His mother was evidently the wife of a well-doing artisan, a wise-looking, capable, bonnie young woman; and Baby was not a marvel of attire, nor could he be called beautiful. He was dressed after a careful, tidy, comfortable fashion, and he was a clear-skinned, healthy child; that is all you would have noticed had you met the two on the street. In a'bus where there is nothing to do for forty minutes except stare into one another's faces, a baby has the great chance of his life, and this baby was made to seize it. He was not hungry, and there were no pins about his clothes, and nobody had made him afraid, and he was by nature a human soul. So he took us in hand one by one, till he had reduced us all to a state of delighted subjection, to the pretended scandal and secret pride of his mother. His first conquest was easy, and might have been discounted, for against such an onset there was no power of resistance in the elderly woman opposite—one of the lower middles, fearfully stout, and of course a grandmother. He simply looked at her—if he smiled, that was thrown in—for, without her knowledge, her arms had begun to shape for his reception—so often had children lain on that ample resting-place. "Bless 'is little 'eart; it do me good to see him." No one cared to criticize the words, and we remarked to ourselves how the expression changes the countenance. Not heavy and red, far less dull, the proper adjective for the face is motherly. The next passenger, just above Grannie, is a lady, young and pretty, and a mother? Of course; did you not see her look Baby over, as an expert at her sharpest, before she grows old and is too easily satisfied? Will she approve, or is there something wrong which male persons and grandmothers cannot detect? The mother is conscious of inspection, and adjusts a ribbon His Majesty had tossed aside—one of his few decorations which he wore on parade for the good of the public and his own glory—and then she meekly awaited approval. For a moment we were anxious, but that was our foolishness, for in half a minute the lady's face relaxed, and she passed Baby. She leant forward and asked questions, and we overheard scraps of technical detail: "My first... fourteen months... six teeth... always well." Baby was bored, and apologised to the'bus. "Mothers, you know—this is the way they go on; but what a lot they do for us! so we must be patient." Although rank outsiders—excluded from the rites of the nursery—yet we made no complaint, but were rather pleased at this conference. One was a lady, the other a working woman; they had not met before, they were not likely to meet again, but they had forgotten strangeness and differences in the common bond of motherhood. Opposite me a priest was sitting and saying his office, but at this point his eye fell on the mothers, and I thought his lips shaped the words "Sancta Maria" before he went on with the appointed portion, but that may have been my fancy. The'bus will soon be dropping into poetry. Let us be serious and stare before us, as becometh well-bred English people.