In that tenth year her married life there stood for the mother in
her face three children: Huggo who then was nine; Dora, whom she
called Doda because in her first prattle this heart's delight of
hers-"A baby girl! A beloved one, Harry, to be daughter to me, and
to be a tiny woman with me as little girls always are, and then
budding up beside me and being myself to me again, my baby girl, my
daughter, my woman-bud, my heart's own heart!"--had thus pronounced
her name, who then was seven; and last Benjamin, then five, whom
she named Benjamin because, come third, come after cognizance of
confliction within herself, come after resentment of his coming--called
Benjamin because, come out of such, there were such happy tears,
such tender, thank-God, charged with meaning tears to greet him,
the one the last of three, the little tiny one, so wee beside the
lusty, toddling others. Benjamin she told Harry he must be named;
Benji she always called him.
Huggo and Doda and Benji! Her children! Her darling ones, her
lovely ones! Love's crown; and, what was more, worn in the persons
of these darling joys of hers (when they were growing up to nine
and seven and five years old) in signal, almost arrogant in her
disdain of precedent to the contrary, that woman might be mother
and yet work freely in the markets of the world precisely as man
is father but follows a career.
Children! There had been a time when, speaking from the boy that
would stand mutinous and reckless in her face, and with her April
voice, she had expressed her view on parentage in terms of the old
resentment at the old disability, encountered, bedrocked, wherever
into life she struck a new trail; in terms of the old invertion of
an old conceit wherever with her principles she touched conventional
opinion.
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