So Daniel Granger was wont to sit and
stare at the infant as if it had been something above the common clay of
which infancy is made. He would gaze at it for an hour together, in a dumb
rapture, fully believing it to be the most perfect object in creation; and
about this child there sprung up between his wife and himself a sympathy
that had never been before. Only deep in Clarissa's heart there was a vague
jealousy. She would have liked her baby to be hers alone. The thought of
his father's claim frightened her. In the time to come her child might grow
to love his father better than her.
Finding her counsel rejected, Miss Granger would ask in a meek voice if she
might be permitted to kiss the baby, and having chilled his young blood by
the cool and healthy condition of her complexion, would depart with an air
of long-suffering; and this morning visit being over, Clarissa was free of
her for the rest of the day. Miss Granger had her "duties." She devoted her
mornings to the regulation of the household, her afternoons to the drilling
of the model villagers. In the evening she presided at her father's dinner,
which seemed rather a chilling repast to Mr. Granger, in the absence of
that one beloved face. He would have liked to dine off a boiled fowl in
his wife's room, or to have gone dinnerless and shared Clarissa's
tea-and-toast, and heard the latest wonders performed by the baby, but he
was ashamed to betray so much weakness.
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