'Well, my dear, if you will have it so, I'll go on. They grew up beautiful babies, they did indeed, and didn't folks admire them! There's lots of people drives through our village when it's the season at Scarborough; they takes carriages, my dear, and they come driving out with lads in red jackets riding on them poor tired horses—"post-williams," I think they call them. I'm telling you no lie, my dear, when I tell you them little lads has brought in scores of threepenny bits that the ladies have thrown them from their carriages, when the girl took them out by the lodge gate; they was so taken with the pretty dears, they was.
'Well, all went on well, my lass, till the teeth began to come,—oh, them teeth, what a nuisance they are! I've lost mine, my dear, all but two, and I'm sure it's a good job to have done with 'em—they're nothing but bother, always aching and breaking and worrying you. Well, the teething went very hard with the babies; his child was the worst, though, and one day little Jacky had a convulsion fit, and didn't my master send off for the doctor in a hurry; and all that night he sat up watching his bairn, for fear it should have another fit. Doctor came once or twice after that, for the little lad kept poorly, though the fits did not come back.
'"Ay, doctor," I says one day, when he had little Jack in his arms, and was saying what a pretty boy he was—"Ay, doctor," I says, "but look at my child," and I held up little Jemmy. "He's the beauty now, isn't he, doctor?"
'"You're very fond of that boy, aren't you?" says doctor.
'"Fond of him! Why, doctor," I says, "I love him till I often think I could go bare-foot all my life and live on bread and water if it would do him a bit of good."
'"Take care you don't love him too much," says doctor, looking quite grave; "folks mustn't make idols even of their own bairns. Don't be offended, missis," he says, "but it doesn't do to set your heart too much on anything, not even on your own little lad: you might lose him, you know."
'Well, I was huffy with doctor after that; I was a bit put out, and I says, "Well, doctor, if I thought I was going to lose him I would love him a hundred times better than ever." So, my dear, doctor shook his head at me and went away, and (would you believe it!) only five hours after I had to send for him all in a hurry to come to my child. He'd taken a fit like Jacky had; but oh! my dear, he didn't come out of it as Jacky did; it was a sore, sore fit, and before doctor could get to him—and he ran all the way from the village—my bonny bairn was gone.'
'Oh, grandmother, you would feel that,' said Poppy's mother.
'Yes, my dear, I did indeed; and when bedtime came, and he had his child laid aside him, and my child was laid dead in the best room downstairs, I felt as if my heart would break. He wanted me to take his child, but little Jacky was used to father, and wouldn't come to me, and, my dear, I cried myself to sleep.'
'And how much longer did the other baby live, grandmother?' said Poppy.