



Produced by David Widger






HIS MAJESTY BABY AND SOME COMMON PEOPLE

By Ian MacLaren

1902

To Andrew Carnegie,

The Munificent Benefactor Of

Scots Students




I.--HIS MAJESTY BABY

UNTIL the a'bus stopped and the old gentleman entered, we had been a
contented and genial company, travelling from a suburb into the city in
high, good fellowship, and our absolute monarch was Baby. His mother
was evidently 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
be called beautiful. He was dressed after a careful, tidy, comfortable
fashion, and he was a clear-skinned, healthy child; that is all you
would have noticed had you met the two on the street. In a'bus where
there is nothing to do for forty minutes except stare into one another's
faces, a baby 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 nobody had made him afraid, and he was by nature a human
soul. So he took us in hand one by one, till he had reduced us all to a
state of delighted subjection, to the pretended scandal and secret
pride of his mother. His first conquest was easy, and might have been
discounted, for against such an onset there was no power of resistance
in the elderly woman opposite--one of the lower middles, fearfully
stout, and of course a grandmother. He simply looked at her--if he
smiled, that was thrown in--for, without her knowledge, her arms had
begun to shape for his reception--so often had children lain on that
ample resting-place. "Bless 'is little 'eart; it do me