“Good Lord! It’s a choilt!” exclaimed Simon Clegg, the eldest tanner in the yard. “Lend a hand here, fur the sake o’ th’ childer at whoam.”
Half a dozen hooks and plungers were outstretched, even while he spoke; but the longest was lamentably too short to arrest the approaching cradle in its course, and the unconscious babe seemed doomed. With frantic haste Simon Clegg rushed on to Tanner’s Bridge, followed by a boy; and there, with hook and plunger, they met the cradle as it drifted towards them, afraid of over-balancing it even in their attempt to save. It swerved, and almost upset; but Simon dexterously caught his hook within the wooden hood, and drew the frail bark and its living freight close to the bridge. The boy, and a man named Cooper, lying flat on the bridge, then clutched at it with extended hands, raised it carefully from the turbid water, and drew it safely between the open rails to the footway, amidst the shouts and hurrahs of breathless and excited spectators.
The babe was screaming terribly. The shock when the first hook stopped the progress of the cradle had disturbed its dreams, and its little fat arms were stretched out piteously as strange faces looked down upon it instead of the mother’s familiar countenance. Wrapping the patchwork quilt around it to keep it from contact with his wet sleeves and apron, Simon tenderly as a woman, lifted the infant in his rough arms, and strove to comfort it, but in vain. His beard of three days growth was as a rasp to its soft skin, and the closer he caressed, the more it screamed. The men from the tannery came crowding round him.
“What dost ta mean to do wi’ th’ babby?” asked the man Cooper of old Simon. “Aw’d tak’ it whoam to my missis, but th’ owd lass is nowt to be takken to, an’ wur cross as two sticks when oi only axed fur mi baggin to bring to wark wi’ mi this mornin’,” added he, with rueful remembrance of the scolding wife on his hearth.
“Neay, lad, aw’ll not trust th’ poor choilt to thy Sally. It ’ud be loike chuckin’ it out o’ th’ wayter into th’ fire (Hush-a-by, babby). Aw’ll just take it to ar’ Bess, and hoo’ll cuddle it up, and gi’ it summat to sup, till we find its own mammy,” answered Simon, leaving the bridge. “Bring the kayther[3] alung, Jack,” (to the boy) “Bess’ll want it. We’n noan o’ that tackle at ar place. Hush-a-by, hush-a-by, babby.”
But the little thing, missing its natural protector, and half stifled in the swathing quilt, only screamed the louder; and Simon, notwithstanding his kind heart, was truly glad when his daughter Bess, who had witnessed the rescue from their own window, met him at the tannery gate, and relieved him of his struggling charge.
“Si thi, Bess! here’s a God-send fur thi—a poor little babby fur thi to tend an’ be koind to, till them it belungs to come a-seekin’ fur it,” said he to the young woman; “but thah mun give it summat better than cowd wayter—it’s had too mich o’ that a’ready.”
“That aw will, poor darlin’!” responded she, kissing the babe’s velvet cheeks as, sensible of a change of nurses, it nestled to her breast. “Eh! but there’ll be sore hearts for this blessed babby, somewheere.” And she turned up the narrow passage which led at once from the tan-yard and the bridge, stilling and soothing the little castaway as adroitly as an experienced nurse.
“Neaw, luk thi, lad,” Simon remarked to Cooper; “is na it fair wonderful heaw that babby taks to ar Bess? But it’s just a way hoo has, an’ theere is na a fractious choilt i’ a’ ar yard but’ll be quiet wi’ Bess.”
Cooper looked after her, nodded an assent, and sighed, as if he wished some one in another yard had the same soothing way with her.