But the baby only grew wider awake, and began to murmur and fret.
“Woroo!—this’ll niver do, at all, at all,” said Pat. “He towld me to sing if it grew worse,—so sing it is, and here goes.”
Whereupon Pat began a wild, shrill, crooning chant, about some personage named Biddy Malone, whose eventful history, however, he was not able to complete, for the baby, waking wide up, began to cry very vociferously.
“Sure an it’s all up wid me!” said Pat. “What-iver I’ll do not a one of me knows, at all, at all. He said if he got worse to take him up. I don’t know about it,—but—how and iver, here goes.” So stooping down, with the best intentions in the world, Pat took the baby up in his arms, and put it on his knee, in the hope that this plan might succeed in sending it off to sleep.
But it didn’t succeed any better than the other plans, for whether the baby was fastidious and didn’t like Pat’s treatment, or whether Pat handled him too roughly, or whether he was hungry and wanted food, or ill and wanted nursing,—whichever of these it was,—certain it is that the moment Pat took him up he sent forth a cry that struck terror to Pat’s soul, and made the welkin ring.
“Och, murther! murther!” said Pat. “What iver’ll I do at all wid it? An me to be here for more than two good hours! Whis-s-sh, then, I tell ye! Arrah, will ye niver be quiet? What’ll I do at all, at all. Sure an he said to walk about wid it. That same I’ll do this minute.”
So Pat rose from the chair and proceeded to walk about the room. But the new treatment did no good. On the contrary, the baby cried harder.
It is to be feared that Pat’s handling was rougher than what the baby had been accustomed to, and that Pat’s patience being quite exhausted, prevented any gentleness in his treatment of his ten—der charge. And so it was that the baby bawled, and Pat groaned, and was completely at his wit’s end.
“Och, but it’s nearly dead an kilt I am,” cried Pat, at last. “What was it that he said to do next? He said to sing, and knock the furniture about, so he did. It’s the racket that’ll soothe him,—deed an it is,—and that’s what I’ll thry.”
With this Pat began another song, a little livelier than the last; and walking about the room, he began to knock upon the furniture. He upset two chairs, he beat upon a tin pan, he rapped the poker against the stove-pipe, he rattled the leaf of the table, he kicked over a small table and several stools, he rolled tin kettles about the floor, until at last the room presented an appearance that made it seem as if a mad bull had been there kicking indiscriminately. But notwithstanding Pat’s efforts, he could not succeed. The baby, who at first had been silent for a few moments, perhaps from astonishment, now began louder, wilder, and more passionate cries, till the noise from those small lungs drowned the uproar that Pat was making.