She sat down in a chair beside the bed, and sat the baby on the top of the bed near its father’s head.
And there she watched it.
The man showed but very little interest in his child.
“I thought, of course, it was a boy,” he said; “but, poor little devil, it is better that it should be a girl, for I have no money to leave it, but being a girl, it can marry some of these days and live on some other fellow’s money. Take it away now, Jennie. I can’t stand much of it,” he said.
And the mortified young mother took away the dazed and depressed baby and afterward said to her own mamma:
“I never knew Essie to behave so stupidly. You might have thought she was a little idiot.”
“Poor baby! The dark room and the haggard man subdued her spirits. It is a wonder she had not cried,” replied the grandmother.
“I am very glad she did not—that would have made him worse,” said Jennie.
After this the sinking man declined daily.
Jennie spent hours at his bedside, often having the baby with her when he could bear it.