She led me to the corner of the room, between the stove and mamma’s door. There, on two chairs, was a tiny bed, and under the blanket a tiny baby with a broad forehead, black, silky hair, a cunning little mouth, but no nose to speak of. Yet she was pretty. I thought I should like to squeeze her to a jelly, and cover her with kisses, though I don’t know as that would be orthodox jelly-cake for any but a cannibal.
Papa glanced at her with a tender smile, then sighed. Perhaps he was thinking of the long way the little feet would have to travel. It is a great journey, after all, from the City of Destruction to the New Jerusalem. Something in the baby-face brought to mind Christiana and the children.
“Great pity ’tisn’t a boy,” persisted Aunt Letty.
“O, I don’t know about that. They are so handy to take one another’s clothes,” said papa, humorously.
“To be sure. But yours could be cut over,” returned the literal woman.
“I am afraid that I shall always need mine to the last thread. I have lost the trick of outgrowing them. O, have you heard that Mrs. Bowers’s sister has come from the west? Arrived last evening.”
“Land sakes alive! Why, I guess I’ll run right over. Sally and me was thick as peas in our young days. And her husband’s been a what you call it out there, senate, or constitution, or something.”
“Member of the legislature,” corrected father, quietly.
“O, yes. Some folks do get along. There’s the middle of my needle. I should knit there if the house was afire!”
She brushed down her skirts, put her knitting in her satchel, jerked her shawl up, and pinned it, and settled her old black bonnet more askew than ever. Mrs. Whitcomb kindly pulled it straight for her.