HIS MAJESTY BABY
AND SOME COMMON PEOPLE
By Ian MacLaren
1902
To Andrew Carnegie,
The Munificent Benefactor Of
ScotsStudents
CONTENTS
XVIII.—UPON THE LECTURE PLATFORM
I.—HIS MAJESTY BABY
UNTIL the a'bus stopped and the old gentleman entered, we had been acontented and genial company, travelling from a suburb into the city inhigh, good fellowship, and our absolute monarch was Baby. His mother wasevidently the wife of a well-doing artisan, a wise-looking, capable,bonnie young woman; and Baby was not a marvel of attire, nor could he becalled beautiful. He was dressed after a careful, tidy, comfortablefashion, and he was a clear-skinned, healthy child; that is all you wouldhave noticed had you met the two on the street. In a'bus where there isnothing to do for forty minutes except stare into one another's faces, ababy has the great chance of his life, and this baby was made to seize it.He was not hungry, and there were no pins about his clothes, and nobodyhad made him afraid, and he was by nature a human soul. So he took us inhand one by one, till he had reduced us all to a state of delightedsubjection, to the pretended scandal and secret pride of his mother. Hisfirst conquest was easy, and might have been discounted, for against suchan onset there was no power of resistance in the elderly woman opposite—oneof the lower middles, fearfully