“I know ver’ little,” said the stranger. “I have learn all alone, that nobody might know. I have planned it for long time to get a little change. Enfant, tais-toi; he is bad; he is disagreeable; but it is to you he owes his existence, and I have brought him to you.”
“You do not mean to give him a bad character, poor little thing,” Miss Susan said with a forced smile. “Take care, take care, baby!”
“He will not take care. He likes to play with fire, and he does not understand you,” said the woman, with almost a look of pleasure. Miss Susan seized the child and, drawing him away from the fender, placed him on the rug; and then the house echoed with a lusty cry, that startling cry of childhood which is so appalling to the solitary. Miss Susan, desperate and dismayed, tried what she could to amend her mistake. She took the handsomest book on the table in her agitation and thrust its pictures at him; she essayed to take him on her lap; she rushed to a cabinet and got out some curiosities to amuse him. “Dear, dear! cannot you pacify him?” she said at last. Augustine had turned away and gone out of the room, which was a relief.
“He does not care for me,” said the woman with a smile, leaning back in her chair and stretching out her feet to the fire. “Sometimes he will scream only when he catches sight of me. I brought him to you;—his aunt,” she added meaningly, “Madame knows—Gertrude, who lost her baby—can manage him, but not me. He is your child, Madame of the Viteladies. I bring him to you.”
“Oh, heaven help me! heaven help me!” cried Miss Susan wringing her hands.
However, after awhile the baby fell into a state of quiet, pondering something, and at last, overcome by the warmth, fell fast asleep, a deliverance for which Miss Susan was more thankful than I can say. “But he will catch cold in his wet clothes,” she said bending over him, not able to shut out from her heart a thrill of natural kindness as she looked at the little flushed face surrounded by its closely-tied cap, and the little sturdy fat legs thrust out from under his petticoats.
“Oh, nothing will harm him,” said the mother, and with again a laugh that rang harshly. She pushed the child a little aside with her foot, not for his convenience, but her own. “It is warm here,” she added, “he likes it, and so do I.”
Then there was a pause. The stranger eyed Miss Susan with a half-mocking, defiant look, and Miss Susan, disturbed and unhappy, looked at her, wondering what had brought her, what her object was, and oh! when it would be possible to get her away!
“You have come to England—to see it?” she asked, “for pleasure? to visit your friends? or perhaps on business? I am surprised that you should have found an out-of-the-way place like this.”
“I sought it,” said the new-comer. “I found the name on a letter and then in a book, and so got here. I have come to see you.”