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From the day of the child's birth it did not leave Eugenia's sight. Her eyes followed it when it was carried about the room, and she watched wistfully the dressing and undressing of the round little body. She knew each separate frock that she had made before its coming, and each day she called for a different and a daintier one. "I must make new ones," she said at last, "he is such a beauty! " And she would hold out her arms for him, half dressed as he was, and, as he lay beside her, fresh and cool and fragrant as a cowslip ball, she would cover the soft pink flesh with passionate kisses. Her motherhood was an obsession, jealous, intense, unreasoning.
They had named him after the general -- Thomas Battle Webb, but to Eugenia he was "the baby," the solitary baby in a universe where birth is as common as death. And, indeed, he was a thing of joy -- the nurse, Dudley, Miss Chris, all admitted it. There was never so round, so rosy, so altogether marvellous a baby, and never one that laughed so much or cried so little. "He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth," declared Miss Chris. "I can see his luck already in his eyes."