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 had continued to violate it ever since. When Gilbert teased her she laughed Sir Oracle to scorn.

“He never had any children of his own, Gilbert—I am positive he hadn’t or he would never have written such rubbish. You just can’t help talking baby talk to a baby. It comes natural—and it’s right. It would be inhuman to talk to those tiny, soft, velvety little creatures as we do to great big boys and girls. Babies want love and cuddling and all the sweet baby talk they can get, and Little Jem is going to have it, bless his dear itty heartums.”

“But you’re the worst I ever heard, Anne,” protested Gilbert, who, not being a mother but only a father, was not wholly convinced yet that Sir Oracle was wrong. “I never heard anything like the way you talk to that child.”

“Very likely you never did. Go away—go away. Didn’t I bring up three pairs of Hammond twins before I was eleven? You and Sir Oracle are nothing but cold-blooded theorists. Gilbert, just look at him! He’s smiling at me—he knows what we’re talking about. And oo dest agwees wif evy word muzzer says, don’t oo, angel-lover?”

Gilbert put his arm about them. “Oh you mothers!” he said. “You mothers! God knew what He was about when He made you.”

So Little Jem was talked to and loved and cuddled; and he throve as became a child of the house of dreams. Leslie was quite as foolish over him as Anne