behind her back, without offering to take it. The baby regarded her with large wide eyes, and crowed at the sight of the fire. Really it was rather attractive, after all.
"Well, Lord Harchester," remarked Dodo, "how is your lordship to-day? Did it ever enter your very pink head that you were a most important personage? Really you have very little sense of your dignity. Oh, you are rather, nice. Come here, baby."
She held out her arms to take it, but his lordship apparently did not approve of this change. He opened his mouth in preparation for a decent protest.
"Ah, do you know, I don't like you when you howl," said Dodo; "you might be an Irish member instead of a piece of landed interest. Oh, do stop. Take him please, nurse; I've got a headache, and I don't like that noise. There, you unfilial scoundrel, you're quiet enough now."
Dodo nodded at the baby with the air of a slight acquaintance.
"I wonder if you'll be like your father," she said; "you've got his big blue eyes. I rather wish your eyes were dark. Do a baby's eyes change when he gets older? Ah, here's your godmother. I am so glad to see you," she went on to Mrs. Vivian. "You see his lordship has come down to say how do you do."
"Dear Dodo," said Mrs. Vivian, "you are looking wonderfully better. Why don't they let you go out this lovely day?"
"Oh, I've got a cold," said Dodo, "at least I'm told so. There—good-bye, my lord. You'd better take him upstairs again, nurse. I am so delighted to see you," she continued; pouring out tea. "I've been rather dull all day. Don't you know how, when you particularly want to see people; they never come. Edith looked in this morning, but she did nothing but whistle and drop things. I asked Jack to come, but he couldn't."
"Ah," said Mrs. Vivian softly, "he has come back, has he?"
"Yes," said Dodo, "and I wanted to see him. Did you ever hear of anything so ridiculous as his going off in that way. You know he left England directly after his visit to us in January, and he's only just back. It's too absurd for Jack to pretend he was ill. He swore his doctor had told him to leave England for three months. Of course that's nonsense. It was very stupid of him."
Mrs. Vivian sipped her tea reflectively without answering.
"Chesterford is perfectly silly about the baby," Dodo went on. "He's always afraid it's going to be ill, and he goes up on tiptoe to the nursery, to see if it's all right. Last night he woke me up about half-past ten, to say that he heard it cough several times, and did I think it was the whooping cough."
Mrs. Vivian did not seem to be listening.
"I heard from Mr. Broxton once," she said; "he wrote from Moscow, and asked how you were, and three weeks ago he telegraphed, when he heard of the birth of the baby."
"I don't know what's the matter with Jack," said Dodo, rather petulantly. "He wrote to me once, the silliest letter you ever saw, describing the Kremlin, and Trèves Cathedral, and the falls of the Rhine. The sort of letter one writes to one's great-aunt. Now I'm not Jack's great-aunt at all."
There was another tap at the door.
"That's Chesterford," remarked Dodo, "he always raps now, and if I don't answer he thinks I'm asleep, and then he goes away. You just see."
The tap came again, and after a moment's interval the door opened.
"Jack!" exclaimed Dodo.
She got up from her chair and went quickly towards him. Jack was pale, and his breath came rather short, as if he had been running.
"Why, Dodo," he cried, "I thought I couldn't come, and then I thought I could, so I did."
He broke off rather lamely, and greeted Mrs. Vivian.
"Dear old Jack," said Dodo, "it does me good to see you. Your face is so nice and familiar, and I've wanted you awfully. Jack, what do you mean by writing me such a stupid letter? especially when I'd written to you so nicely. Really, I'm not your grand-mother yet, though I am a mother. Have you seen the baby? It isn't particularly interesting at present, though of course it's rather nice to think that that wretched little morsel of flesh and bones is going to be one of our landed proprietors. He'll be much more important than you will ever be, Jack. Aren't you jealous?"
Dodo was conscious of quite a fresh tide of interest in her life. Her intellectual faculties, she felt, had been neglected. She could not conceive why, because she had a husband and baby, she should be supposed not to care for other interests as well. Chesterford was an excellent husband, with a magnificent heart; but Dodo had told herself so often that he was not very clever, that she had ceased trying to take an intellectual pleasure in his society, and the baby could not be called intellectual by the fondest parent at present. There were a quantity of women who were content to pore on their baby's face for hour after hour, with no further occupation than saying "Didums" occasionally. Dodo had given what she considered a fair trial to this treatment, and she found it bored her to say "Didums" for an indefinite period, and she did not believe it amused the baby. She had a certain pride in having given birth to the son and heir of one of the largest English properties, and she was extremely glad to have done so, and felt a certain pleased sort of proprietorship in the little pink morsel, but she certainly had experienced none of the absorbing pleasures of maternity. She had got used to not being in love with her husband, and she accepted as part of this same deficiency the absence of absorbing pleasure in the baby. Not that she considered it a deficiency, it was merely another type turned out of Nature's workshop. Dodo laid all the blame on Nature. She shrugged her shoulders and said: "You made me so without consulting me. It isn't my fault!" But Dodo was aware that Nature had given her a brain, and she found a very decided pleasure in the company of clever people. Perhaps it was the greatest pleasure of her life to be admired and amused by clever people. Of course Chesterford always admired her, but he was in love with her, and he was not clever. Dodo had felt some difficulty before her marriage in dealing with this perplexing unknown quantity, and she had to confess it puzzled her still. The result was, that when it occurred, she had to admit her inability to tackle it, and as soon as possible to turn to another page in this algebra of life.
But she still felt that her marriage had been a great success. Chesterford had entirely fulfilled what she expected of him: he was immensely rich, he let her do as she liked, he adored her. Dodo quite felt that it was better that he should adore her. As long as that lasted, he would be blind to any fault of hers, and she acknowledged that, to a man of Chesterford's character, she must seem far from faultless, if he contemplated her calmly. But he was quite unable to contemplate her calmly. For him she walked in a golden cloud that dazzled and entranced him. Dodo was duly grateful to the golden cloud.
But she felt that the element which Jack, and Mrs. Vivian, and other friends of hers brought, had been conspicuously absent, and she welcomed its return with eagerness.
"You know we haven't been leading a very intellectual life lately," Dodo continued. "Chesterford is divinely kind to me, but he is careful not to excite me. So he talks chiefly about the baby, and how he lost his umbrella at the club; it is very soothing, but I have got past that now. I want stimulating. Sometimes I go to sleep, and then he sits as still as a mouse till I wake again. Pity me, Jack, I have had a dull fortnight; and that is worse than anything else. I really never remember being bored before!"
Dodo let her arms drop beside her with a little hopeless gesture.
"I know one's got no business to be bored, and it's one's own fault as a rule if one is," she went on. "For instance, that woman in the moated Grange ought to have swept away the blue fly that buzzed in the pane, and set a mouse-trap for the mouse that shrieked, and got the carpenter
