“So is mine,” returned Elizabeth. “We might have brought them in a little cart or something, but I thought it would look so much more,—more,—intimate to carry them.”
“Yes, of course,” returned Betsy doubtfully; “but though they are good little things, I wouldn’t mind if mine were a little further away from my nose.”
Elizabeth laughed, but she had to stand still in order to do it,—the extra exertion of carrying the baby at the same time was a little too much for her powers.
“I think I will sit down on this stone,” said Betsy, “for, although my baby isn’t as big as yours, it does seem as if it would weigh a ton before we reached your cousin’s house.”
“I tell you what I will do,”—Elizabeth had a plan; “if you can look after both babies for a few minutes, I will go home and bring back Babs’s baby carriage; she doesn’t use it any more, and it is in the wood-house where I can easily get it; then we can take the babies in it as far as our house and will only have to carry them the rest of the way. We can take them all the way back to Mrs. McGonigle’s in the carriage, too.”
Betsy thought this an excellent plan, and agreed to look after both babies. “I don’t see why I can’t do it as well as Maggie McGonigle,” she said, “for she is only eight years old.”
So, leaving Betsy with the babies both hunched up on her lap as she sat on the big flat stone by the way, Elizabeth sped home and soon returned with the carriage. The babies were both lifted in and the two self-instituted nursemaids cheerfully pushed it along. Having reached the lower gate of the Hollins place, they pushed the carriage inside and then took up their burdens again. “I’m thankful we didn’t have to carry them all the way,” sighed Betsy. “My arm would have been broken before now. I don’t see how Maggie McGonigle stands lugging babies around.”
“Where was she this afternoon, I wonder,” said Elizabeth.
“Oh, I think I saw her with the next oldest ones out in the yard when we were there. There is one just walking and another a little bigger, you know. Here, Josie, you musn’t chew that dirty shawl!” She removed the end of shawl from the baby’s mouth and instantly the child set up a wail.
“Oh dear, if they begin to cry I don’t know what we shall do,” said Elizabeth. “I believe Jo is thinking of it; somehow he looks as if he were. Here, Jo, see the pretty flowers. Jumpity, jumpity, jump!” She tried to distract the baby’s attention, but was only partially successful, for he continued to fret while his small sister’s wail increased in volume until it reached the ears of a lady walking in the garden of the gray house.