of going into weeds for a man who died thirteen years ago
and good riddance then!' And when old Louisa Baldwin remarked to me
that she thought it very strange that Leslie should never have
suspected it wasn't her own husband _I_ said, 'YOU never suspected it
wasn't Dick Moore, and you were next-door neighbor to him all his life,
and by nature you're ten times as suspicious as Leslie.' But you can't
stop some people's tongues, Anne, dearie, and I'm real thankful Leslie
will be under your roof while Owen is courting her."

Owen Ford came to the little house one August evening when Leslie and
Anne were absorbed in worshipping the baby. He paused at the open door
of the living room, unseen by the two within, gazing with greedy eyes
at the beautiful picture. Leslie sat on the floor with the baby in her
lap, making ecstatic dabs at his fat little hands as he fluttered them
in the air.

"Oh, you dear, beautiful, beloved baby," she mumbled, catching one wee
hand and covering it with kisses.

"Isn't him ze darlingest itty sing," crooned Anne, hanging over the arm
of her chair adoringly. "Dem itty wee pads are ze very tweetest
handies in ze whole big world, isn't dey, you darling itty man."

Anne, in the months before Little Jem's coming, had pored diligently
over several wise volumes, and pinned her faith to one in especial,
"Sir Oracle on the Care and Training of Children." Sir Oracle implored
parents by all they held sacred never to talk "baby talk" to their
children. Infants should invariably be addressed in classical language
from the moment of their birth. So should they learn to speak English
undefiled from their earliest utterance. "How," demanded Sir Oracle,
"can a mother reasonably expect her child to learn correct speech, when
she continually accustoms its impressionable gray matter to such absurd
expressions and distortions of our noble tongue as thoughtless mothers
inflict every day on the helpless creatures committed to their care?
Can a child who is constantly called 'tweet itty wee singie' ever
attain to any proper conception of his own being and possibilities and
destiny?"

Anne was vastly impressed with this, and informed Gilbert that she
meant to make it an inflexible rule never, under any circumstances, to
talk "baby talk" to her children. Gilbert agreed with her, and they
made a solemn compact on the subject--a compact which Anne shamelessly
violated the very first moment Little Jem was laid in