the grass, was making a ducky
angel of himself by wriggling along it, obliquely, as he sat.

At the sight of him all the Brodricks instantaneously lost their
seriousness and sanity. He was captured and established as the centre of
the group. And, in the great act of adoration of the Baby, Levine was
once more united to his wife's family.

His wife's family, like his wife, could forgive anything to Louis Levine
because of the babies. It reserved its disapproval for Mrs. John
Brodrick who had never had any; who had never done anything that was
expected of her. Mrs. John looked as if she had cried a great deal
because of the things she had not done. She had small hazel eyes with
inflamed lids, and a small high nose that was always rather red. She was
well born, and she carried her low-browed, bird-like head among the
Brodricks with a solitary grace, and the motions of a dignified,
distinguished bird.

And now, in mute penitence and wistful worship, she prostrated herself
before their divinity, the Baby.

And in the middle of it all, with amazing smiles and chuckles, the Baby
suddenly renounced his family and held out his arms to Jane. And
suddenly all the Brodricks laughed. His mother laughed more than any of
them. She took the Baby, and set him at Jane's feet; and he sat there,
looking at Jane, as at some object of extraordinary interest and wonder
and fascination. And Brodrick looked at both of them with something of
the same naif expression, and the Doctor, the attenuated, meditative
Doctor, looked at all three, but especially at his brother. Gertrude
Collett looked, now at Brodrick and now at Jane.

Brodrick did not see the Doctor or Gertrude either. It had just struck
him that Jane was not in the least like her portrait, _the_ portrait. He
was thinking, as Tanqueray had once thought, that Gisborne, R. A., was
an ass, and that if he could have her painted he would have her painted
as she looked now.

As he was trying to catch the look, Gertrude came and said it was the
Baby's tea-time, and carried him away. And the look went from Jane's
face, and Brodrick felt annoyed with Gertrude because she had made it
go.

Then Mrs. John came up and tried very hard to talk to Jane. She was
nervously aware that conversation was expected of her as the wife of the
head of the family, and that in this thing also she had failed him. She
was further oppressed by Miss Holland's celebrity, and by the idea she
had that Miss Hollan