us that I weep if Ronayne gets out of my sight
when we go for a stroll, if too little toast comes up for my breakfast,
or the chocolate isn't frothed, or the trunk won't lock, and have
aphasia to that degree that I say cancel when I mean endorse, hair-brush
when I want a biscuit, and go stumping down to dinner in a boot and a
slipper, being incapable of the connected effort of memory and will that
would get both feet into fellow shoes.

But I'm blissfully happy all the same, and we've beheld a spectacle
lately that reconciles me perfectly with my own absurdity, and my
awkwardness with my precious tot.

Coming up the Rhine we had a pair of fellow voyagers, circumstanced
somewhat like ourselves: first baby, not over young (the couple, not the
baby, which was only six weeks old!), but travelling without a nurse.
This mighty functionary had struck almost at the moment of their
departure from London, and a charitable but inexperienced friend came to
their aid and set forth with them in charge of the baby.

We missed them on the Batavier, which wasn't strange, and first had our
attention drawn to them by the slow Dutch landlord's asking Ronayne, as
we stood looking idly out into the formal little garden of the new Bath
hotel at Rotterdam, if that was _his_ baby a young woman seated on one
of the garden benches was jerking up and down so violently? "Because it
was shaken about too much. Young babies couldn't be kept too quiet."
This young woman was the benevolent friend, and I suppose the parents
were off sight-seeing in the town; for every now and then the whole day
through one or another of us reported encountering the young woman
alone somewhere, always tossing the baby more or less about.

But next day, after we had embarked on the Rhine boat, and I had helped
nurse turn our tiny state-room into a tolerable nursery (that folding
bassinnette is just _invaluable_, and lulled by the motion and the
breezy air, my lammie slept better in it than in her own quarters at
home), I went upon deck to find Ronayne, and on the way came upon a
most piteous, persistent wail, and the wail's father and mother in
abject, helpless tendance upon it.

Of course my newly-found mother's heart took me straight to the
miserable group; and after a few sympathetic inquiries, I sat down
beside the mother, and took the querulous little creature in my arms,
where presently it hushed off to sleep. How proud I felt! for that's
more than my own baby o