“Wid dat chile?” chuckled Mornin, delightedly. “I sh’d think not, Mars’ D’Willerby! Dat ar chile’s a-thrivin’ an’ a-comin’ ’long jes’ like she’d orter. Dar ain’t a-gwine to be nothin’ wrong wid dat chile.”
“That’s a good thing,” said Tom.
He sat down by the cradle’s side and regarded its occupant with an interest as fresh as if she had just appeared for the first time upon his horizon. She had been imbibing a large quantity of milk, and the effect of this nourishment had been to at once compose her spirits and slightly enliven them. So she employed the passing moments by looking at Tom with steadfast and solemn eyes—not, perhaps, very intelligently, but still with a vacant air of interest in him in his character of an object.
“Why,” he said, “she’s grown; she’s grown in thirty-six hours, and she’s improved too. Oh, yes! she’s coming along nicely.”
He touched her very carefully with his large forefinger, a liberty which she did not resent or even notice, unless the fact that she winked both eyes might be regarded as a token of recognition.
“We’ll have a box full of things here for her in a couple of weeks,” he said. “And then she can start out in life—start out in life.”
The last four words seemed to please him; as he repeated them he touched her cheek again, carefully as before.
“And start out fair, too!” he added. “Fair and square—as fair and square as any of them.”
He remained a little longer in his seat by the cradle, talking to Mornin, asking her questions and delivering messages laden with advice from little Mrs. Rutherford, which instructions Aunt Mornin plainly regarded as superfluous.
“Now, Mars’ D’Willerby,” she giggled in amiable scorn, “didn’t I raise fo’ o’ my young Mistes’s? Mornin ain’t no spring chicken. Dar ain’t nuffin ’bout chillun Mornin h’aint heerd. Leeve dis yere chile to Mornin.”