"No, Missy. You see I didn't know you were coming. If your mamma would let you come another day and I knew in time, I could bake a nice cake."
"Yes," said Hoodie, "and baby might have some. Does baby like cake?"
"She hasn't no teeth to bite it with yet, Missy dear," said the young woman.
"No teess!" exclaimed Hoodie, "what a funny baby. Did God forget zem?" she added, in a lower voice.
The young woman turned away to hide her laughter; and just at this moment there came a rap at the door—a well-known rap evidently, for up jumped the young woman with a pleased face.
"David!" she exclaimed, as she opened the door, "I thought you wouldn't be back till late, or I'd have waited tea."
"I came in to say as I've got to go out again," said the man—a good-humoured looking young labourer—"little baby" had every reason to be good-humoured with such pleasant tempered father and mother!—"I've to drive over to Greenoaks to fetch some little pigs, so I mayn't be in till late. But bless us!" he exclaimed, as he just then caught sight of Hoodie seated in perfect satisfaction and evidently quite at home, at the tea-table, "who ever's this you've got with you, Liz?"
His surprise was so comical that it set "Liz" off laughing again.
"Bless me if I can tell you, David," she said. "She's the most old-fashioned little piece of goods I ever came across. But such a nice little lady too, and that taken with our baby! She won't tell me her name nor nothing," and then she went on to describe to David, Hoodie's arrival and all she had said.
David scratched his head, as, half hidden in the doorway, where Hoodie had not yet caught sight of him, he glanced at the child, still deeply interested in her "tea."