"
The first part was, indeed, a severe and forcible picture of the
responsibilities of mothers, and a warning against the evils that
were in the world, and lying in ghastly wait for the little baby of
two days old. His wife did not write, said the old gentleman,
because he had forbidden it, she being indisposed with a sprained
ankle, which (he said) quite incapacitated her from holding a pen.
However, at the foot of the page was a small "T.O.," and on turning
it over, sure enough, there was a letter to "my dear, dearest
Molly," begging her, when she left her room, whatever she did, to
go UP stairs before going DOWN: and telling her to wrap her baby's
feet up in flannel, and keep it warm by the fire, although it was
summer, for babies were so tender.
It was pretty to see from the letters, which were evidently
exchanged with some frequency between the young mother and the
grandmother, how the girlish vanity was being weeded out of her
heart by love for her baby. The white "Paduasoy" figured again in
the letters, with almost as much vigour as before. In one, it was
being made into a christening cloak for the baby. It decked it
when it went with its parents to spend a day or two at Arley Hall.
It added to its charms, when it was "the prettiest little baby that
ever was seen.
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