Family Pride

Wilford had wished for a son, and in the first moment of disappointment he had almost been conscious of a half-resentful feeling toward Katy, who had given him only a daughter. A boy, a Cameron heir, was something of which to be proud, especially as Jamie would always remain a helpless cripple; but a little girl, scarcely larger than the last doll with which Katy had played, was a different thing, and it required all Wilford's philosophy and common sense to keep him from showing his chagrin to the girlish creature, whose love had fastened with an idolatrous grasp upon her child, clinging to it with a devotion which made Helen tremble as she thought what if God should take it from her.

"He won't, oh, He won't," Katy had said, when once she suggested the possibility, and in the eyes usually so soft and gentle there was a fierce gleam, as Katy hugged her baby closer to her, and said: "God does not willfully torment us. He will not take my baby, when my whole life would die with it. I had almost forgotten to pray, there was so much else to do, till baby came, but now I never go to sleep at night or waken in the morning, that there does not come a prayer of thanks for baby given to me. I could hardly love God if He took her away."

There was a chill feeling at Helen's heart as she listened to her sister and then glanced at the baby so passionately loved. In time it would be pretty, for it had Katy's perfect features, and the hair just beginning to grow was a soft, golden brown; but it was too small now, too puny to be handsome, while in its eyes there was a scared, hunted kind of look, which chafed Wilford more than aught else could have done, for that was the look which had crept into Katy's eyes at Newport when she found she was not going home. Still it was a Cameron, of royal lineage, loved at least by four, its mother, its grandfather, Helen and Jamie, while the others looked forward to a time when they should be proud of it, even if they were not so now.

Many discussions had been held at the elder Cameron's concerning its name, Mrs. Cameron deciding finally that it should bear her own, Margaret Augusta, while Juno advocated that of Rose Marie, inasmuch as their new clergyman would Frenchify the pronunciation so perfectly, rolling the "_r_," and placing so much accent on the last syllable. At this the Father Cameron swore as cussed nonsense--"better call it Jemima, a grand sight, than saddle it with such a silly name as Rose Mah-ree, with a roll to the 'r,'" and with another oath the disgusted old man departed, while Bell suggested that Katy might wish to have a voice in naming her own child.