"Yes, mamma, my baby; don't you hear it cry? 'Tis hungry!" And she started to run up-stairs, but her mother called her back.
"Why, Nannette, what ails you? What do you mean about your baby?" she asked in surprise.
"Why my baby, mamma! I bought it for a quarter of a dollar! a baby that cries—not a mis'ble make b'leve baby. Oh, how it does cry! it must be awful hungry!" And away she darted up the stairs.
Her father and mother arose from their seats in perfect amazement, and followed their little girl to
her room, where, lying upon her bed, was a bundle from which came a baby's cries. Nannette's mother began to unfasten the wrappings, and sure enough there was a wee little girl not more than two or three weeks old looking up at them with two great wet eyes.
Of course Nannette was questioned, and she related all she could remember of her talk with the woman from whom she bought the baby. Her papa said perhaps the baby had been stolen, and that something had been given to it to make it sleep.
"But what shall we do with it?" asked both the father and mother. "Do with it?" cried Nannette. "Why, it is my baby, mamma! I paid all my money for it. It cries, it does! I will keep it always."
So it was decided, that the baby should stay, if nobody came to claim it, which nobody ever did, although Nannette's papa put an advertisement in a newspaper about it.
It would take a larger book than this one in which to tell all of Nannette's experiences in taking care of "my baby," as she called the little girl, whom she afterward named Victoria, in honor of the then young queen of England.
Victoria is now a woman, and she lives, as does Nannette, in the city of Philadelphia. She has a little girl of her own, "mos' six" who is named Nan