old dog now. Broad and low on his bandy paws,
with a black head on a white body and a ridiculous black spot at
the other end of him, he provokes, when he walks abroad, smiles
not altogether unkind. Grotesque and engaging in the whole of his
appearance, his usual attitudes are meek, but his temperament discloses
itself unexpectedly pugnacious in the presence of his kind. As he lies
in the firelight, his head well up, and a fixed, far away gaze directed
at the shadows of the room, he achieves a striking nobility of pose in
the calm consciousness of an unstained life. He has brought up one baby,
and now, after seeing his first charge off to school, he is bringing up
another with the same conscientious devotion, but with a more deliberate
gravity of manner, the sign of greater wisdom and riper experience,
but also of rheumatism, I fear. From the morning bath to the evening
ceremonies of the cot, you attend the little two-legged creature of your
adoption, being yourself treated in the exercise of your duties with
every possible regard, with infinite consideration, by every person in
the house--even as I myself am treated; only you deserve it more.

The general's daughter would tell you that it must be "perfectly
delightful."

Aha! old dog. She never heard you yelp with acute pain (it's that poor
left ear) the while, with incredible self-command, you preserve a rigid
immobility for fear of overturning the little two-legged creature. She
has never seen your resigned smile when the little two-legged creature,
interrogated, sternly, "What are you doing to the good dog?" answers,
with a wide, innocent stare: "Nothing. Only loving him, mamma dear!"

The general's daughter does not know the secret terms of self-imposed
tasks, good dog, the pain that may lurk in the very rewards of rigid
self-command. But we have lived together many years. We have grown
older, too; and though our work is not quite done yet we may indulge now
and then in a little introspection before the fire--meditate on the art
of bringing up babies and on the perfect delight of writing tales where
so many lives come and go at the cost of one which slips imperceptibly
away.

VI

In the retrospect of a life which had, besides its preliminary stage
of childhood and early youth, two distinct developments, and even two
distinct elements, such as earth and water, for its successive scenes,
a certain amount of naiveness is unavoidable. I am conscious of it in
th