His Majesty Baby, And Some Common People (1902) (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

Description

UNTIL the a'bus stopped and the old gentleman entered, we had been a contented and genial company, travelling from a suburb into the city in high, good fellowship, and our absolute monarch was Baby. His mother was evidently the wife of a well-doing artisan, a wise-looking, capable, bonnie young woman; and Baby was not a marvel of attire, nor could he be called beautiful. He was dressed after a careful, tidy, comfortable fashion, and he was a clear-skinned, healthy child; that is all you would have noticed had you met the two on the street. In a'bus where there is nothing to do for forty minutes except stare into one another's faces, a baby has the great chance of his life, and this baby was made to seize it. He was not hungry, and there were no pins about his clothes, and nobody had made him afraid, and he was by nature a human soul. So he took us in hand one by one, till he had reduced us all to a state of delighted subjection, to the pretended scandal and secret pride of his mother. His first conquest was easy, and might have been discounted, for against such an onset there was no power of resistance in the elderly woman opposite-one of the lower middles, fearfully stout, and of course a grandmother. He simply looked at her-if he smiled, that was thrown in-for, without her knowledge, her arms had begun to shape for his reception-so often had children lain on that ample resting-place.