She's
headstrong. She always has been. Doesn't do for her to think too much."
Her Grace was alone now with her son and heir and the nurse. She bent
over the cot and smiled upon Henry Fitzgeorge; he smiled back at her,
and even gave an absent-minded crow; but his gaze almost instantly swung
back again to the window, through which, deeply and with solemn
absorption, he watched the clouds.
She gave him her hand, and he closed his fingers about one of hers; but
even that grasp was abstracted, as though he were not thinking of her at
all, but was simply behaving like a gentleman.
"I don't believe he's realised me a bit, nurse," she said, turning away
from the cot.
"Well, Your Grace, they always take time. It's early days."
"But what's he thinking of all the time?"
"Oh, just nothing, Your Grace."
"I don't believe it's nothing. He's trying to settle things. This--what
it's all about--what he's got to do about it."
"It may be so, Your Grace. All babies are like that at first."
"His eyes are so old, so grave."
"He's a jolly little fellow, Your Grace."
"He's very little trouble, isn't he?"
"Less trouble than any baby I've ever had to do with.
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