“Papa, kiss!” says Deedee, soft and pleadin'.
Well, I rather guess we all kissed her! We hugged her until she was
gaspin' for breath, and she smiled at us, and forgive us all, even while
the sobs come once in a while to interfere with her smilin'.
“Ain't she a dear, _dear_ baby?” cried Marthy. “Poor little thing!”
When we had loved her enough to spoil any good the spankin' had done,
Marthy drove us out.
“Come, deary,” she says to Deedee, “say your little prayers, mama
forgot.”
Deedee pressed up against her ma's knee, joyous.
“Now I--” Marthy prompts her.
“Nowee--” says Deedee.
“Lay me--” says Marthy.
“_Laim_,” says Deedee, tickled as you please, and then wonderin' why the
whole lot of us shouts out “Laim!” of a sudden, and why we laugh, and
crowd 'round her, and kiss her, and kiss her!
“Poor baby!” says Marthy. “To be spanked for wantin' to say her
prayers!”
“By George!” says Uncle Edward. “Talk about your martyrs! She beats the
whole bunch!”
And to think there was once a time when me and Marthy thought a kid was
more bother than it was worth! There ain't no child, nowhere, that ain't
worth more than everything else in the world all put together. No, sir!
A baby has got more human nature in it than a man has, even. You take
your big, rough hand to it, and you chastise it, so that it screams out,
and the next minute it takes time in between sobs to hug its soft little
arms around your neck, and kiss you. Ain't that the reallest kind of
human nature? Why, that's the kind that makes the world worth livin' in
at all.
I don't seem to recollect ever hearin' that Heaven was set aside as a
sort of place where married folks could hang about by twos. Them that
has had experience knows that that would be a mighty poor kind of
heaven--one without children in it. It's the child kind of human nature
that sweetens up the world. The “give and take” kind--take your spankin'
when it comes, and give back love in return for it.