Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/220

208 she wanted love so much—so frightfully much, so that she just had to pretend that she had it."

"And what about the Baby?" asked Mr. Despard, taking one arm from his own baby to pass it round his wife's shoulders. "Don't be a darling idiot, Molly. What about the Baby?"

"Oh—don't you see?" Mrs. Despard was sobbing now in good earnest. "She wanted the Baby more than anything else. Oh—don't say horrid things about her, Bill! We've got everything—and she'd got nothing at all—don't say things—don't!"

Mr. Despard said nothing. He thumped his wife sympathetically on the back. It was the baby who spoke.

"Want mammy," she said sleepily, and at the transfer remembered her father, "and daddy too," she added politely.

Miss Eden was somewhere or other. Wherever she was she was alone.

And these three were together.

"I daresay you're right about that girl," said Mr. Despard. "Poor wretch! By Jove, she was ugly!"