s,--boy a male young bundle of habits. Man is a machine,--boy
a male young machine. Man is a tail-less monkey,--boy a male young
tail-less monkey. Man is a combination of gases,--boy a male young
combination of gases. Man is an appearance,--boy a male young
appearance," etc., etc., and etcetera, ad infinitum! And if none of
these definitions had entirely satisfied my father, I am perfectly
persuaded that he would never have come to Mrs. Primmins for a new one.

But it so happened that my father was at that moment engaged in the
important consideration whether the Iliad was written by one Homer, or
was rather a collection of sundry ballads, done into Greek by divers
hands, and finally selected, compiled, and reduced into a whole by a
Committee of Taste, under that elegant old tyrant Pisistratus; and the
sudden affirmation, "It is a boy," did not seem to him pertinent to the
thread of the discussion. Therefore he asked, "What is a boy?" vaguely,
and, as it were, taken by surprise.

"Lord, sir!" said Mrs. Primmins, "what is a boy? Why, the baby!"

"The baby!" repeated my father, rising. "What, you don't mean to say
that Mrs. Caxton is--eh?"

"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Primmins, dropping a courtesy; "and as fine a
little rogue as ever I set eyes upon."

"Poor dear woman," said my father, with great compassion. "So soon,
too--so rapidly," he resumed, in a tone of musing surprise. "Why, it is
but the other day we were married!"

"Bless my heart, sir," said Mrs. Primmins, much scandalized, "it is ten
months and more."

"Ten months!" said my father with a sigh. "Ten months! and I have not
finished fifty pages of my refutation of Wolfe's monstrous theory! In
ten months a child! and I'll be bound complete,--hands, feet, eyes,
ears, and nose!--and not like this poor Infant of Mind," and my father
pathetically placed his hand on the treatise, "of which nothing is
formed and shaped, not even the first joint of the little finger! Why,
my wife is a precious woman! Well, keep her quiet. Heaven preserve her,
and send me strength--to support this blessing!"

"But your honor will look at the baby? Come, sir!" and Mrs. Primmins
laid hold of my father's sleeve coaxingly.

"Look at it,--to be sure," said my father, kindly; "look at it,
certainly: it is but fair to poor Mrs. Caxton, after taking so much
trouble, dear soul!"

Therewith my father, drawing his dressing-robe round him in more stately
folds, followed Mrs. Primmins upstairs