‘Yes,’ replied Peter. ‘It would be something to amuse us; it’s rather dull, you know, always having to keep quiet on account of the lodgers.’
Peter and Flossy soon found they were to have their wish. Martha could only spare a very short time to attending to the baby’s wants, and the poor little mite would have had a very unhappy and neglected life but for the children.
As it happened, however, the wee white baby had not a dull life of it at
all; when its teeth were not troubling it, and when it was not very hungry, it had quite a merry time. It was devoted to the children, and even when it was sending forth its wail for more food and some real mother’s love, it would stop crying and give a clear hearty little laugh if Flossy shook her head of tangled red-brown hair in front of it, or if Snip-snap, the mongrel terrier, stood on his hind-legs and begged to it.
Peter and Flossy had been rather troublesome children before the arrival of the baby. Mrs Franklin’s lodgers were fond of calling them ‘little termagants,’ and liked exceedingly to hint to the mother that if the termagants did not make themselves scarce they would be obliged to seek other quarters. Poor Mrs Franklin was always extremely frightened when these things were said, for she knew the rent, and to a certain
extent the daily bread of the children, depended on the lodgers. When she learned that the baby must inevitably come to them, she laid one very solemn command upon her household.
‘On no account whatever let out to Mrs Sinclair, and Mrs Potts, and Mr Martin that there is a baby in the house. If you do, go they will, and nothing that I can possibly say will keep them. I’m terribly frightened to think how the baby’s existence can be kept from them, but if they know it, most certainly go they will.’
‘Mother,’ said Flossy, who was rather afraid of her mother, and did not often put a direct question to her, ‘if the baby stays up in the old, old attic-nursery, and if Pete and me and Snip can play with it and it never cries, then Mrs Potts and Mr Martin needn’t know nothing about it, need they, mother?’
‘If it never cries, Flossy, they need not know about it,’ answered Mrs Franklin; ‘but whoever yet heard of a baby not crying? Of course it will cry all day and all night. I know it will be the ruin of us, and I think it was very unkind of your father to allow it to be brought here.’
‘But suppose, mother, Pete and I play with the baby, and we make it so happy that it doesn’t cry?’ answered little Flossy.