structions, which,
he declared, were so bristling with capitals that he could fairly see
them drop from her lips. Then, when he found how really very much in
earnest she was, and how hurt she was at his levity, he managed to pull
his face into something like sobriety while she talked to him, though he
did persist in dropping kisses on her cheeks, her chin, her finger-tips,
her hair, and the little pink lobes of her ears--"just by way of
punctuation" to her sentences, he said. And he told her that he wasn't
really slighting her lips, only that they moved so fast he could not
catch them. Whereat Billy pouted, and told him severely that he was a
bad, naughty boy, and that he did not deserve to be the father of the
dearest, most wonderful baby in the world.

"No, I know I don't," beamed Bertram, with cheerful unrepentance; "but I
am, just the same," he finished triumphantly. And this time he contrived
to find his wife's lips.

"Oh, Bertram," sighed Billy, despairingly.

"You're an old dear, of course, and one just can't be cross with you;
but you don't, you just _don't_ realize your Immense Responsibility."

"Oh, yes, I do," maintained Bertram so seriously that even Billy herself
almost believed him.

In spite of his assertions, however, it must be confessed that Bertram
was much more inclined to regard the new member of his family as just
his son rather than as an Important Trust; and there is little doubt
that he liked to toss him in the air and hear his gleeful crows of
delight, without any bother of Observing him at all. As to the Life and
Character and Destiny intrusted to his care, it is to be feared that
Bertram just plain gloried in his son, poked him in the ribs, and
chuckled him under the chin whenever he pleased, and gave never so much
as a thought to Character and Destiny. It is to be feared, too, that he
was Proud without being Humble, and that the only Opportunity he really
appreciated was the chance to show off his wife and baby to some less
fortunate fellow-man.

But not so Billy. Billy joined a Mothers' Club and entered a class in
Child Training with an elaborate system of Charts, Rules, and Tests. She
subscribed to each new "Mothers' Helper," and the like, that she came
across, devouring each and every one with an eagerness that was tempered
only by a vague uneasiness at finding so many differences of opinion
among Those Who Knew.

Undeniably Billy, if not Bertram, was indeed realizing the Enormous