Therefore he asked, "What is a boy ?" vaguely, and, as it were, taken by surprise.
"Lord, sir!" said Mrs.Primmins, "what is a boy?
Why, the baby!" "The baby!" repeated my father, rising.

"What, you don't mean to say that Mrs.Caxton is--eh ?" "Yes, I do," said Mrs.Primmins, dropping a courtesy; "and as fine a little rogue as ever I set eyes upon." "Poor dear woman," said my father, with great compassion.

"So soon, too--so rapidly," he resumed, in a tone of musing surprise.

"Why, it is but the other day we were married!" "Bless my heart, sir," said Mrs.Primmins, much scandalized, "it is ten months and more." "Ten months!" said my father with a sigh.

"Ten months! and I have not finished fifty pages of my refutation of Wolfe's monstrous theory! In ten months a child! and I'll be bound complete,--hands, feet, eyes, ears, and nose!--and not like this poor Infant of Mind," and my father pathetically placed his hand on the treatise, "of which nothing is formed and shaped, not even the first joint of the little finger! Why, my wife is a precious woman! Well, keep her quiet.