e little body sank, the mouth and throat
sucking, sucking, sucking, drinking life from her to make a new
life, almost sobbing with passionate joy of receiving its own
existence, the tiny hands clutching frantically as the nipple
was drawn back, not to be gainsaid. This was enough for Anna.
She seemed to pass off into a kind of rapture of motherhood, her
rapture of motherhood was everything.

So that the father had the elder baby, the weaned child, the
golden-brown, wondering vivid eyes of the little Ursula were for
him, who had waited behind the mother till the need was for him.
The mother felt a sharp stab of jealousy. But she was still more
absorbed in the tiny baby. It was entirely hers, its need was
direct upon her.

So Ursula became the child of her father's heart. She was the
little blossom, he was the sun. He was patient, energetic,
inventive for her. He taught her all the funny little things, he
filled her and roused her to her fullest tiny measure. She
answered him with her extravagant infant's laughter and her call
of delight.

Now there were two babies, a woman came in to do the
housework. Anna was wholly nurse. Two babies were not too much
for her. But she hated any form of work, now her children had
come, except the charge of them.

When Ursula toddled about, she was an absorbed, busy child,
always amusing herself, needing not much attention from other
people. At evening, towards six o'clock, Anna very often went
across the lane to the stile, lifted Ursula over into the field,
with a: "Go and meet Daddy." Then Brangwen, coming up the steep
round of the hill, would see before him on the brow of the path
a tiny, tottering, windblown little mite with a dark head, who,
as soon as she saw him, would come running in tiny, wild,
windmill fashion, lifting her arms up and down to him, down the
steep hill. His heart leapt up, he ran his fastest to her, to
catch her, because he knew she would fall. She came fluttering
on, wildly, with her little limbs flying. And he was glad when
he caught her up in his arms. Once she fell as she came flying
to him, he saw her pitch forward suddenly as she was running
with her hands lifted to him; and when he picked her up, her
mouth was bleeding. He could never bear to think of it, he
always wanted to cry, even when he was an old man and she had
become a stranger to him. How he loved that little
Ursula!--his heart had been sharply seared for her, when he
was a youth, first m