“Dodo is just the creature not to mind about having anything of her own⁠—children or anything!” said Celia to her husband. “And if she had had a baby, it never could have been such a dear as Arthur. Could it, James?”

“Not if it had been like Casaubon,” said Sir James, conscious of some indirectness in his answer, and of holding a strictly private opinion as to the perfections of his firstborn.

“No! just imagine! Really it was a mercy,” said Celia; “and I think it is very nice for Dodo to be a widow. She can be just as fond of our baby as if it were her own, and she can have as many notions of her own as she likes.”

“It is a pity she was not a queen,” said the devout Sir James.

“But what should we have been then? We must have been something else,” said Celia, objecting to so laborious a flight of imagination. “I like her better as she is.”