The old man was so distinctly puzzled that Joanne had to laugh. “They don’t have to do it unless they want to,” she told him, “but they like to know how.”
The climax was reached so far as Unc’ Aaron’s opinion was concerned when the girls bore off the lock-keeper’s baby and kept it most of a day while its mother did her wash. “Das a huckleberry ’bove my ’simmon,” he said, shaking his head. “I gives up. Dey is sholy nice, kind young ladies, but, honey, uh uh, dey pintedly does quare things.”
The girls, however, considered the baby a great find. “He is an awfully nice little thing,” said Betty Streeter, who was his discoverer, “and he is so ragged and dirty that it gives us a lovely chance to bathe him and patch him up. I told his mother, who bears the sweet name of Violet Scraggs, that we could keep him all day, if she didn’t mind, and we can take turns in looking after him.”
“He doesn’t look scraggy,” remarked Winnie, which speech brought forth a groan from the rest. “What do they give him to eat?”
“I asked Mrs. Scraggs and she said: ‘He eats pretty much what we do.’”
“Mercy me!” exclaimed Claudia. “How awful! I suppose they feed him on bacon and cabbage or any old thing. It is a wonder he lives.”
“He was eating a nice large chunk of cake,” Betty told her, “but I managed to get it away from him without his realizing it. It was pretty rich-looking cake, too.”
“How old is he?” inquired Joanne.
“A year and a half.”
“He might be a right pretty child if he were clean and had on decent clothes,” continued Joanne. “I wonder why his mother doesn’t keep him looking better.”