It was very pleasant and agreeable news to me, and to Josiah. And Cassandra and Nathan acted well about it. They said they was glad it all turned out so well, but their minds didn’t seem to be on the news so much as they was on their babe. And it is a very good-lookin’ child, and appears middlin’ well for a child of its age. Takes after its father some—sort o’ sandy, with red hair. It don’t look much, as little Samantha Jo did, nor it don’t have that noble, beautiful appearance she had at that age. But then you can’t expect that any other child is ever goin’ to look and act like her. I do despise people bein’ so bound up in their own childern and grandchildern that they can’t see no good qualities in any other childern. Thank fortune that hain’t my way, nor never was. And I say, and I always shall say, that Cassandra’s babe hain’t a babe to be ashamed of, and feel above, not by any means.
Bein’ so awful bashful, Nathan don’t probable associate with it so much, and act on such intimate terms with it as he would if it wuzn’t for that. But in a mild, sheepish way, he seems to think the world of it, and seems to want to do everything he can to make it feel to home with ’em, and happy. But he don’t come out openly and express his admiration and affection, as he would if it wuzn’t for that drawback.
Now, he dassent hold it much, or that is, he don’t seem to dast. But Cassandra bein’ proud-spirited, and wantin’ Nathan to show off some, would once in a while put the babe in his lap.
He never would make any move to stop her. He never would refuse to take it. He would set and hold it jest as long as she felt disposed to leave it there. But he would look down on it in a skairt, wonderin’, breathless way, as if the child got there in his lap through some mysterious and inscrutable decree of Providence, and it wuzn’t for him to resist. But he suffered intensely at such times, I could see.
And every little while Cassandra (bein’ determined to make Nathan show off) would tell him to say sunthin’ to the babe, talk baby-talk to it. And he would always try to. He would always do jest as Cassandra told him to (a cleverer critter never walked). His face would be as red as a red handkerchief, but he would ask the babe, up in a little, high, fine voice:
“DO YOU WANT A PAIR OF BOOTS?”
“Do you want a pair of boots?”
He never made any other remark to the child that I heard, only jest that. I heard him say that to it more’n 20 times, I dare persume to say. For Cassandra, bein’ so anxious to have him show off, kep’ tellin’ him to talk to it. And it seemed as if that remark was all he could think of that would be agreeable to the child. But Josiah said, as we was talkin’ it over afterwards, that he heard him say two or three times to it:
“Yes, it shall have a pair of boots.”