'Poor Sophy!' said Lucy. 'Never mind her, mamma, but she is odder
than ever, since baby has been born. When Eweretta came up and told
us, she hid her face and cried; and when grandmamma wanted to make us
promise to love him with all our hearts, and not make any difference,
she would only say, "I wont!"'
'We will leave him to take care of that, Lucy,' said Albinia. But
though she spoke cheerfully, Winifred was not surprised, after a
little interval, to hear sounds like stifled weeping.
Almost every home subject was so dangerous, that whenever Mrs.
Ferrars wanted to make cheerful, innocent conversation, she began to
talk of her visit to Ireland and the beautiful Galway coast, and the
O'Mores of Ballymakilty, till Albinia grew quite sick of the names of
the whole clan of thirty-six cousins, and thought, with her aunts,
that Winifred was too Irish. Yet, at any other time, the histories
would have made her sometimes laugh, and sometimes cry, but the world
was sadly out of joint with her.
There was a sudden change when, for the first time her eye rested on
the lawn, and she beheld the work of drainage. The light glanced in
her eye, the colour rose on her cheek, and she exclaimed, 'How kind
of Edmund!'
Winifred must needs give her husband his share. 'Ah! you would never
have had it done without Maurice.'
'Yes,' said Albinia, 'Edmund has been out of the way of such things,
but he consented, you know.
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