“I can’t have any joy in my baby at all!” she would lament; and Thyrsis would have to soothe the child, and plead with her to find more practical ways of demonstrating her maternal devotion.
Cedric was beginning to make determined efforts to talk now, and he had the most original names forthings. His parents would adopt these into their own speech, which thus departed rapidly from established usage. They had to bring themselves to realize that if they went on in that fashion, the child would never learn to speak so that any one else could understand him. The grandmothers were most strenuous upon this point, and would laboriously explain to the infant that chickens and pigeons and sparrows were not all known as “ducky-ducks”; they would plead with it to say “bottle of milk”, while its reck
