“And—did I like the baby?” She asked it almost bashfully.
“It is just as sweet as it can be. I only wish it was large enough to hold and to carry about.”
“Thank you, dear.”
Years afterwards I knew what that meant.
I went out to the kitchen to see about the dinner. We never had regular servants like other people. It was the lame, and the halt, and the blind, and the ignorant, metaphorically speaking. Papa brought them home and mamma took pity on them. Now it was Becky Sill, a great, overgrown girl of sixteen, whose intemperate father had just died in the poorhouse, where the three younger children—boys—were waiting for a chance to be put out to the farmers.
“Look at this ’ere floor, Miss Rose! I’ve scrubbed it white as snow. And I’ve been a peelin’ of pertaters.”
“This floor is sufficient, Becky; and peeling, and potatoes.”
“O, law, you’re just like your mother. Some people are born ladies and have fine ways. I wasn’t.”
“You have been very industrious,” I returned, cheerfully; and then I went at the dinner.
The hungry, noisy troop came home from school. What if they were all boys!