ssett was in the family way.
Neither Sir Charles nor Lady Bassett mentioned this rumor. It would
have been like rubbing vitriol into their own wounds. But this reserve
was broken through one day. It was a sunny afternoon in June, just
thirteen months after Mr. Bassett's wedding--Lady Bassett was with her
husband in his study, settling invitations for a ball, and writing
them--when the church-bells struck up a merry peal. They both left off,
and looked at each other eloquently. Lady Bassett went out, but soon
returned, looking pale and wild.

_"Yes!"_ said she, with forced calmness. Then, suddenly losing her
self-command, she broke out, pointing through the window at Highmore,
_"He_ has got a fine boy--to take our place here. Kill me, Charles!
Send me to heaven to pray for you, and take another wife that will love
you less but be like other wives. That villain has married a fruitful
vine, and" (lifting both arms to heaven, with a gesture unspeakably
piteous, poetic, and touching) "I am a barren stock."

CHAPTER XIV.

OF all the fools Nature produces with the help of Society, fathers of
first-borns are about the most offensive.

The mothers of ditto are bores too, flinging their human dumplings at
every head; but, considering the tortures they have suffered, and the
anguish the little egotistical viper they have just hatched will most
likely give them, and considering further that their love of their
firstborn is greater than their pride, and their pride unstained by
vanity, one must make allowances for them.

But the male parent is not so excusable. His fussy vanity is an
inferior article to the mother's silly but amiable pride. His obtrusive
affection is two-thirds of it egotism, and blindish egotism, too; for
if, at the very commencement of the wife's pregnancy the husband is
sent to India, or hanged, the little angel, as they call it--Lord
forgive them!--is nurtured from a speck to a mature infant by the other
parent, and finally brought into the world by her just as effectually
as if her male confederate had been tied to her apron-string: all the
time, instead of expatriated or hanged.

Therefore the Law--for want, I suppose, of studying Medicine--is a
little inconsiderate in giving children to fathers, and taking them by
force from such mothers _as can support them;_ and therefore let
Gallina go on clucking over her first-born, but Gallus be quiet, or
sing a little smaller.

With these preliminary rem