Mrs. Quinine, whose health had in no way improved since we left her, lay still stretched upon the sofa of Mrs. Fokesell’s second floor, enacting the part of the interesting invalid as usual. For the last three months, however, her hand had been removed from her cheek, and her fingers busily engaged in inserting tiny embroidered crowns into tiny muslin caps—little things that seemed fit only to serve for the head-dress to an apple-dumpling. Dr. Twaddles had called daily at the house for eight weeks past to inquire “how we were getting on,” and had held himself in readiness, for the same lengthened space of time, to answer the lady’s summons with the least possible delay. Mrs. Pilchers had arrived with her bundle, and had been sleeping on chairs in the studio for the last six weeks. The white satin pincushion ornamented with the well-known infantine greeting of
WELCOME
LITTLE STRANGER.
inscribed in pins, had been forwarded by one of the lady’s “dearest” schoolfellows, so long since that it had lost much of the original delicacy of its complexion. “The basket” had been prepared for many weeks, and stood on the toilet-table in the lady’s bed-room with its powder-box and puff, and its little soft goat’s-hair brush stuck in the side-pockets, and the bassinet remained done up in silver paper in the corner of the room; but though all these extensive preparations had been made for the “little stranger,” and its welcome had been pinned by a friendly hand, the lady and all her female friends were kept in a state of the most tantalizing suspense; for no “little stranger” came.
Each day some new article was added to the infantine wardrobe or furniture, in anticipation of the arrival of the long-looked-for little guest. To-day, Mrs. Pilchers was despatched for the newly-invented “artificial mother” that the lady had seen advertised, and thought it best to be prepared with; to-morrow, the same accommodating dame was hurried off after a half-guinea bottle of the immortal Mrs. Johnson’s Soothing Syrup. Then Mr. Quinine would signalize himself as a “dear man,” by one day presenting his wife with a “sweet pretty” coral and bells, and another, sending her home a “love” of a baby-jumper. All the preliminary arrangements were on the most extensive scale; quarts of dill-water, pound packets of “soujie,” cashmere cloaks and hoods, india-rubber rings, wicker rattles, nursing-aprons, pap-warming nightlamps—each and every of the several puerperal properties had been got ready, even down to the white glove for the knocker, (indicative of a “little kid,”) together with the small five-shilling advertisement in the morning papers concerning “the lady of Fuseli Quinine, Esq.” Indeed, the entire mise en scene of the forthcoming spectacle had been “got up,” as the theatrical managers say, “utterly regardless of expense.”
Suddenly, however, it struck “the lady of Fuseli Quinine, Esq.,” that one thing was still wanting to complete her stock of infantine furniture. She had forgotten that time-honoured preserver of the peace of families—a nurse’s chair; and felt convinced that, without the aid of the popular soporific seat, her “tiddy ickle sing” would never close its eyes; for Mrs. Quinine, enlightened by the profound experiences of Pilchers, was assured that that kind of wabbly, waggly, bobby motion which is peculiar to steam-boats, and the horror of children of a larger growth, was the delight of all those of a tender age, as if the homuncule was specially pleased in having a taste of “the ups and downs” of life at the earliest possible period in its existence.
And certainly Mesdames Pilchers and Quinine were fully borne out in their opinions by the prevailing pacific treatment adopted by mothers and nurses in general. The fashionable theory among those entrusted with the care of infants seems to be, that babies, like physic, “when taken should be well shaken;” and, accordingly, the early existence of the poor little things is made to consist of a series of agitations in every possible direction. In the arms they are bobbed up and down—in the rocking chair they are waggled backwards and forwards—in the cradle they wabble from side to side—on the knee they are joggled till they shake again, like lumps of blanc-mange—and if allowed to remain quiet for a few minutes in that position, they are continually thumped on the back, as if they had swallowed a fish bone in their pap.
“The lady of Fuseli Quinine, Esq.,” was sufficiently impressed with the correctness of what may be styled “the undulating theory” of nursing, that she no sooner discovered she had overlooked what, as newspaper critics say, “should be in every nursery,” than the lady began to think how she could remedy the defect.
A domestic consultation was held with the sagacious Pilchers, when it was arranged that it would be useless purchasing a new chair for the express purpose of wabbling the little stranger about, when “any old thing could be cut down, and have the rockers put to it, at a quarter the expense; whereupon Mrs. Quinine suddenly remembered that they had a spare arm-chair in the studio, which would be the very thing.” Mrs. Pilchers having retired to try the quality of the article, returned in a few moments, saying that the legs would want cutting down about one-half, and then “it would do capital.” It was accordingly arranged that “Nurse” should learn the address of Mrs. Fokesell’s jobbing carpenter, and get him to come in for an hour or two, and make such alterations as were wanted.