“Yes, dead, I gave him to my favorite nurse. The Irish woman wanted him dreadfully, and made a fuss at headquarters, but I proved that she lay in a dead sleep from drinking the very night before we sent her home, so my woman got the child and kept it to the last.”
“And it is dead, ha?”
Jane nodded her head. “Paregoric for breakfast, cordial between whiles, and laudanum at night; that nurse always has quiet babies; can lay ’em down anywhere in a corner or on a shelf. If they wake up and cry, more drops; you can’t think how nat’rally they go to the other sleep at last; it’s quite beautiful.”
“But this one? don’t talk of sleep,—is it dead?”
“As a door-nail!”
“La—a,” ejaculated the old woman, with a sort of distrustful exultation, “if I could believe you now!”
Jane fired up in an instant.
“I see—this is to get rid of paying over the other ear-ring; but it won’t do, I’m not to be taken in that way. Goodness knows the whole set wouldn’t half pay me for the trouble and risk, to say nothing of one’s soul. So it’s no use putting on airs, I’ve earned the ear-rings, and I mean to have ’em.”
“There now, dear, there now, what an ado you are making, and all for nothing at all; dear me, who said a word about not giving you the ring? but the mate, just let me see that, and we will put them together. Earned them? indeed I think you have, dear, and more than that by a good deal. Certainly, my dear, you shall have more than that.”
“Oh, thank you! I deserve it, at any rate, though the girl did escape.”