She stayed with him during his morning ablutions; saw him splash and kick
in the water with the infantine exuberance that mothers love to behold,
fondly deeming that no baby ever so splashed or so kicked before; saw him
arrayed in his pretty blue-braided frock, and dainty lace-bedizened cambric
pinafore. What a wealth of finery and prettiness had been lavished upon the
little mortal, who would have been infinitely happier dressed in rags
and making mud-pies in a gutter, than in his splendid raiment and
well-furnished nursery; an uninteresting nursery, where there were no
cupboards full of broken wagons and head-less horses, flat-nosed dolls and
armless grenadiers, the cast-off playthings of a flock of brothers and
sisters--a very chaos of rapture for the fingers of infancy! Only a few
expensive toys from a fashionable purveyor--things that went by machinery,
darting forward a little way with convulsive jerks and unearthly choking
noises, and then tumbling ignominiously on one side.
Clarissa stayed with the heir of Arden until the clock in the day-nursery
struck nine, and then went to her dressing-room, looking very pale and
haggard after her sleepless night. In the corridor she met her husband. He
bent his head gravely at sight of her, as he might have saluted a stranger
whom he encountered in his own house.
"I shall be glad to speak to you for a quarter of an hour, by and by," he
said.
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