Miss Penelope came to look. "I think we may take this one in, Tilly, without fear. If it contains a man he cannot be very big. See! I can lift the bundle myself. Bring it in, Rhoda; we will examine it in the dining-room."
"It must be living, ma'am! I see it moving. Will it bite?" and she took it up suspiciously and with precaution.
A cry, small and plaintive, was now heard.
"Do you hear that?" said Miss Matilda, "mewing--I think. Can anybody have brought us a cat and kittens? A practical joke I suppose they think it. Yet I like kittens,--soft little balls of fluff and fun," she went on, putting on her gloves at the same time, "but strange cats may bite or scratch. Very impertinent, was it not, of the senders? They mean, I suppose, that we are old maids. Well! If we are, at least it is from choice, and I venture to say we are more comfortably situated than the husband or wife of this impertinent."
"Tush! sister," said Penelope, glancing to the servants standing at the lower end of the table and full of curiosity. "Have you a penknife? Quick! No cat ever mewed like that."
And now indeed it was a lusty cry, distinctly human and articulating mamma. The string was cut, the wrappings were kicked away by the struggling contents of the parcel, and a good-sized, healthy infant, well nourished, well clad, flushing red in the opening paroxysm of a big cry on waking, was disclosed to view.
"A little child!" cried Miss Matilda in transports.
"What a frightful din!" said Miss Stanley, putting her fingers in her ears. "To think that anything so small should make so much noise! What ever shall we do with it?"
"Give it some milk, of course; bathe it, put it to bed. That is what they always do with babies, I believe. Cook! get hot water at once--and a large basin--and some milk--and--and--everything else that is necessary. Quick! you others, and help her," she added, observing the lingering steps of the maids, yawning now, and utterly disgusted and wishing themselves back in bed, though a moment ago they had been all wakefulness and interest.
It was curious to see how Matilda took the lead, now that her sympathies were appealed to, while her practical sister, the mistress and manager of the establishment, stood aside bewildered and confused. She took the child in her arms and walked up and down, dandling it, singing, and purring forth floods of baby talk, till the little one stopped short in the middle of its lament to look at her, and ascertain who this voluble person might be. Then, finding she could make out nothing by her scrutiny, she prepared to resume with augmented vigour, but Matilda would not have it. She sat down with the doubter in her lap, bent over it, and made a bower for it with her curls, crooning more volubly than ever, and tickling it with the ringlet points, till the astonished infant grew confused, forgot that it had intended to scream, and presently was smiling and crowing and pulling the ringlets like bell-ropes.