think
and do rightly, never understood the doubtful amazement now and then
expressed in talking of Alick's choice. One great bond between Rachel
and Mr. Clare was affection for the little babe, who continued to be
Rachel's special charge, and was a great deal dearer to her already than
all the seven Temples put together. She studied all the books on infant
management that she could obtain, constantly listened for his voice,
and filled her letters to her mother with questions and details on his
health, and descriptions of his small person. Alick was amused whenever
he glanced at his strong-minded woman's correspondence, and now and then
used to divert himself with rousing her into emphatic declarations of
her preference of this delicate little being to "great, stout, coarse
creatures that people call fine children." In fact, Alick's sensitive
tenderness towards his sister's motherless child took the form of
avoiding the sight of it, and being ironical when it was discussed; but
with Mr. Clare, Rachel was sure of sympathy, ever since the afternoon
when he had said how the sounds upstairs reminded him of his own little
daughter; and sitting under the yew-tree, he had told Rachel all the
long stored-up memories of the little life that had been closed a few
days after he had first heard himself called papa by the baby lips. He
had described all these events calmly, and not without smiles, and had
said how his own blindness had made him feel thankful that he had safely
laid his little Una on her mother's bosom under the church's shade; but
when Rachel spoke of this conversation to her husband, she learnt that
it was the first time that he had ever talked of those buried hopes. He
had often spoken of his wife, but though always fond of children, few
who had not read little Una's name beneath her mother's cross, knew that
he was a childless father. And yet it was beautiful to see the pleasure
he took in the touch of Bessie's infant, and how skilfully and tenderly
he would hold it, so that Rachel in full faith averred that the little
Alexander was never so happy as with him. The chief alarms came from
Mrs Comyn Menteith, who used to descend on the Rectory like a whirlwind,
when the Colonel had politely expelled her from her father's room at
Timber End. Possessed with the idea of Rachel's being very dull at
Bishopsworthy, she sedulously enlivened her with melancholy prognostics
as to the life, limbs, and senses of the young heir, w