"But, Mother, we are not a never-ending anxiety, are we?"
"Yes, my darling, but an anxiety I would not be without for all the wealth of the Indies. Aren't you a little bit anxious all the time about your baby?"
"Why, yes, just a teensy weensy bit, but then I haven't got used to her yet."
"Well, when you get used to her, she will be just that much more precious."
"But then I have just one, and you have seven."
"Do you think you love her seven times as much as I love you, or Kent or Milly or any of them?"
"Oh, Mother, of course I don't. I know you love all of us just as much as I love my little Mildred, only I just don't see how you can."
"Maybe you will have to have seven children to understand how I can, but when you realize what it means to have Mildred, maybe you can understand what it has meant always to poor Sister Sarah never to have had any children."
"I suppose it is hard on her but, Mother dear, if she had had the seven and you had never had any, do you think for a minute you would have been as porcupinish and cactus-like in your attitude toward the world and especially toward Aunt Clay's seven as she is toward yours? Never!"
Molly's statement was not to be combatted, although Mrs. Brown was not sure what she would have been like without her seven anxieties; but Molly knew that she would have been the same lovely person, no matter how many or how few children she had had.
"I'm going to try to feel differently toward Aunt Clay," she whispered into her baby's ear, as she cuddled her up to her after the great rite of bathing her was completed that morning. "Just think what it must be never to hold your own baby like this! Poor Aunt Clay! No wonder she is hard and cold--but goodness me, I'm glad I did not draw her for a parent." The baby looked up into her mother's eyes with a gurgle and crow, as though she, too, were pleased that her Granny was as she was and not as Aunt Clay was.
"We are going to see Daddy soon, do you know that, honey baby?" And Molly clasped her rosy infant to her breast with a heart full of thanksgiving that now there was no dire reason for her remaining in Kentucky longer.
A farewell visit must be paid to Aunt Mary. The baby was dressed in one of her very best slips and Molly put on her new blue suit for the occasion, as she well knew how flattered the old woman was by such an attention.