she
sucked and to see her little head fall back with her little mouth open
when she had had enough, or to watch her when she stretched herself and
hiccoughed, and then grasped my thumb with her little tight fingers.

Oh, the wild, inexpressible delight of it!

Every hour had its surprise. Every few minutes had their cause of
wonder.

It rather hurt me when baby cried, and I dare say my own foolish lip
would drop at such moments, but when I saw that there were no tears in
her eyes, and she was only calling for her food, I pleaded with nurse to
let me give her the breast again.

The sun shone all day long, and though the holland window blinds were
kept down to subdue the light, for my sake and perhaps for baby's, I
thought my room looked perfectly beautiful. It might be poor and shabby,
but flights of angels could not have made it more heavenly than it was
in my eyes then.

In the afternoon nurse told me I must take some sleep myself, but I
would not sleep until baby slept, so she had to give me my cherub again,
and I sat up and rocked her and for a while I sang--as softly as I
could--a little lullaby.

It was a lullaby I had learned at Nemi from the Italian women in
embroidered outside stays, who so love their children; and though I knew
quite well that it had been written for the Mother of all Mothers, who,
after she had been turned away from every door, had been forced to take
refuge in a stable in Bethlehem, I was in such an ecstasy of spiritual
happiness that I thought it no irreverence to change it a little and to
sing it in my London lodging to my human child.

"_Sleep, little baby, I love thee, I love thee,
Sleep, little Queen, I am bending above thee_."

I dare say my voice was sweet that day--a mother's voice is always
sweet--for when Emmerjane, who had been out of the room, came back to it
with a look of awed solemnity, she said:

"Well, I never did! I thought as 'ow there was a' angel a-come into this
room."

"So there is, and here she is," I said, beaming down on my sleeping
child.

But the long, short, blissful day came to an end at last, and when night
fell and I dropped asleep, there were two names of my dear ones on my
lips, and if one of them was the name of him who (as I thought) was in
heaven, the other was the name of her who was now lying in my arms.

I may have been poor, but I felt like a queen with all the riches of
life in my little room.

I may have sinned against th