Poor
Lavinia! How well I remember the evening they arrived--she and the two
poor yellow shrivelled-up looking little creatures. I remember, sad at
heart as we were--only two months after the bitter news of my boy's
death!--Nurse and I could almost have found it in our hearts to laugh
when the ayah unwrapped them for us to see. They were so like two
miserable little unfledged birds! And poor Lavinia so proud of them,
through her tears--what did she know of babies, poor dear?--and looking
so anxiously to see what we thought of them. I _could_ not say they were
pretty--Duke's children though they were." And a queer little
sound--half laugh, half sob--escaped from Grandmamma at the
recollection. But it did not matter--Grandpapa was too deaf to hear. So
she dried her eyes again quietly with her fine lavender-scented cambric
pocket-handkerchief, and went on with her recollections all to herself.
She seemed to see the two tiny creatures gradually--very
gradually--growing plump and rosy in the sweet fresh English air, the
look of unnatural old age that one sometimes sees in very delicate
babies by degrees fading away as the thin little faces grew round and
even dimpled; then came the recollection of the first toddling walk,
when the two kept tumbling against each other, so that even the sad-eyed
young widow could not help laughing; the first lisping words, which,
alas, might not be the sweet baby names for father or mother--for by
that time poor Lavinia had faded out of life, with words of whispered
love and thankfulness to the grandparents so willing to do their utmost.
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