Page:Frank Stockton - Rudder Grange.djvu/239

Rh vacation, I proposed staying at home and enjoying those delights of the country which my business in town did not allow me to enjoy in the working weeks and months of the year. I had no intention of camping out, or of doing anything of that kind, but many were the trips, rides, and excursions I had planned.

I found, however, that if I enjoyed myself in this wise I must do it, for the most part, alone. It was not that Euphemia could not go with me—there was really nothing to prevent—it was simply that she had lost, for the time, her interest in everything except that baby.

She wanted me to be happy, to amuse myself, to take exercise, to do whatever I thought was pleasant, but she herself was so much engrossed with the child that she was often ignorant of what I intended to do, or had done. She thought she was listening to what I said to her, but in reality she was occupied, mind and body, with the baby, or listening for some sound which should indicate that she ought to go and be occupied with it.

I would often say to her: "Why can't you let Pomona attend to it? You surely need not give up your whole time and your whole mind to the child."

But she would always answer that Pomona had a great many things to do, and that she couldn't at all times attend to the baby. Suppose, for instance, that she should be at the barn.

I once suggested that a nurse should be procured, but at this she laughed.

"There is very little to do," she said, "and I really like to do it."

"Yes," said I; "but you spend so much of your