Midget had laid up a few dollars—think of it, children who read this, a few dollars! probably the sum that some of you spend in candy and toys during one day and think nothing of—for a new dress for baby and some trifles for granny and herself. She was eight years old, old enough to feel very grand and important when planning her shopping expedition; and indeed, the little girl sadly needed something to wear, if she would still make herself bright and attractive to baby.
When the days grew warm she used to take her baby to the flower-stand, and people passing paused often, as well to admire this bright little nurse and her charge as to purchase the dainty blossoms offered for sale. Then in an hour or so granny would come for the baby, and, taking her home, leave the small flower vender free to attend to business.
Didn’t Midget get tired of selling her flowers all day on the street? O yes, very tired; but the day’s hard work only made her evenings merrier; and the bed-time frolics with baby made Midget grow fat from laughing, if the old adage is true, “Laugh and grow fat.” There had been so many bright days, in Midget’s opinion, since baby came; that the little girl quite forgot that there were such thing as clouds. And so one day, when she went home, it gave her a dreadful shock to find poor old granny faint and ill upon the low bed, and two of the neighbors watching beside her.
Midget looked around. Where was her baby? There was granny, so white, and grown so suddenly older than Midget had ever noticed before, but baby was crying in the arms of a girl-neighbor, who had volunteered to “kape the spalpeen quiet” till Midget’s return.
It didn’t take our little mother a minute to secure within her own tender arms the frightened baby, and then Midget sat patiently down beside granny, who neither stirred nor opened her dim eyes until midnight. If I had time I could tell you how, after days of watching and sadness, grandma made Midget understand that her sickness could not be cured on earth. But the end came, after all, too suddenly for little Midget’s comprehension, and when the kind neighbors had laid the old woman away, to rest forever from labor, our little heroine had only her laughing, crowing baby to comfort and cheer her.
She went to live with a kind woman who had known granny for years, and was but little better off in worldly goods than the old grandmother had been. Still, Midget could not starve; and she and her baby were made welcome in the new home. And after that she took the little one with her to the flower-stand, and brought her home at noon herself each day for two weeks.
And then another thing happened, which, for a brief time, almost broke the child’s heart.
It was a beautiful day late in the summer, and baby, a big, fat girl, was crowing and laughing in Midget’s lap, when a gentleman paused to buy flowers. While Midget was giving him change baby reached out her hand to touch the gentleman’s cane, and he looked at the baby face first with indifference, then more earnestly, and finally with a startled look on his own face which puzzled Midget.
Then he questioned her about the child, and asked if it had, under the soft golden curls, on the back of the neck, a small red mark.
Midget innocently replied: “O, I’ve seen it whenever I’ve dressed my baby; why, sir?”