Lucy sat in the rocking chair in the kitchen, taking a five-minute reprieve from, well, from everything.

She loved her children, but it had not been in either of their plans to have three children under four years of age.

Little Virgil though was by far the best behaved of the three. He'd just finished feeding and she'd put him down for a nap with Johnny, Scott promising to look after them both. He was such an attentive big brother.

At three months, Virgil was almost double the weight of John at his age, even if he wasn't as long as his older brothers. But where Scott had been a baby that stayed awake all the time and barely slept, constantly needing something to occupy him, and John had been almost nocturnal, Virgil slept most of the day and night, sometimes even needing to be woken up for his meals.

A soft wail stirred Lucy to action, and she was surprised to see Scott leaning over his youngest brother, a frown on his face and some of the cotton pads he'd seen both parents use to clean Virgil's eyes with.

As she watched he gently wiped Virgil's eyes, looked at the pad, looked at his brother's eyes, and frowned again. He was so concentrating on what he was doing that when his Mom leaned over he jumped a little.

'What's the matter, Scotty?'

'There's something in Virgie's eyes.'

'Oh? Let me see.'

She didn't pick him up on his pronunciation, she and Jeff had had a long conversation about how difficult the name would be.

'Hmm, I can't see anything. Can you point it out to me?'

Scott's tiny finger pointed to a small section of Virgil's right eye. His brother responded by reaching for it, and Scott dropped his hand and allowed his brother to grab his finger and barely reacted when the first thing Virgil did was to pull it into his mouth.

In fact, Scott giggled quietly, mindful that John was still asleep.

Lucy smiled at their antics before noticing what Scott had seen. In the top right quadrant of Virgil's eye there was a speckling of brown forming. Huh. Looked like Virgil would have her eye colour. At thirteen months, John's eyes were now a piercing aqua-green, and Scott's had stayed blue.

'Oh, yes, I see it, Scotty. There's nothing wrong with his eyes, honey.'

'There isn't?'

'No. Over the next three months or so you'll see that his eyes are going to turn brown like Momma's are.'

'Really?'

'Really, really.'

Scott beamed at her, all fears put to rest.

Brown eyes, huh.