This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 edition. Excerpt: ...Geoffrey, looking down at it. Though totally unconscious of it himself, he, like many another young father, was not quite free from a certain latent jealousy of this interloping baby that had come to interfere with his exclusive claims to the love and attention he considered his own. It was a boy, too--no man is jealous of his baby-daughter--but a male, though only six months old and his own child, gives rise to the passion somewhere deep down. 'About the same, I think. He is quieter now, ' replied Emily, in answer to her husband's question. 'But nurse doesn't think it is anything?' 'Oh no, sir, nothing at all. I tell Mrs Geoffrey she needn't be at all uneasy.' He stood looking at it silently for a minute or two, then, --'Are you soon coming down, Emily?' 'No, dear. I'm going to stay with baby.' She answered without looking up. 'But you are not going to stay in the nursery all day?' Something in his voice made her raise her eyes to his face. 'You will be out, Geof dear; you are going, are you not?' 'Yes; mother will be so vexed if I don't; and, Emily, I hope you will come too: as he is better, there can be no need for you to stay.' 'O Geoffrey, I should not like to leave him ' and an alarmed expression came into her lustrous eyes. He plunged his hands deeper into his pockets. 'I can't see why, Emily. Nurse will take excellent care of him, and both she and my mother say you are frightening yourself needlessly.' Emily looked appealingly at the nurse, but that functionary, though an excellent creature, was human, and could not but wish, after the manner of nurses, that the mother would betake herself away, and leave her the management of the child. In the eyes of all nurses a mother is an instrument used by Providence for the production of babies, ...