“Go to him then—away with you,” said Pete. “Gro to your godfather. He'd have been your name-father too if it had been a boy you'd been. Off you go!” and he stretched out his hairy arms until the child touched the floor.
Philip stooped to take the little one, who first pranced and beat the rushes with its feet as with two drumsticks, then trod on its own legs, swirled about to Pete's arms, dropped its lower lip, and set up a terrified outcry.
“Ah! she knows her own father, bless her,” cried Pete, plucking the child back to his breast.
Philip dropped his head and laughed. A sort of creeping fear had taken possession of him, as if he felt remotely that the child was to be the channel of his retribution.
“Will you feed her yourself, Pete?” said Nancy. She was coming up with a saucer, of which she was tasting the contents. “He's that handy with a child, sir, you wouldn't think 'Deed you wouldn't.” Then, stooping to the baby as it ate its supper, “But I'm saying, young woman, is there no sleep in your eyes to-night?”
“No, but nodding away here like a wood-thrush in a tree,” said Pete. He was ladling the pobs into the child's mouth, and scooping the overflow from her chin. “Sleep's a terrible enemy of this one, sir. She's having a battle with it every night of life, anyway. God help her, she'll have luck better than some of us, or she'll be fighting it the other way about one of these days.”
“She's us'ally going off with the spoon in her mouth, sir, for all the world like a lil cherub,” said Nancy.
“Too busy looking at her godfather to-night, though,” said Pete. “Well, look at him. You owe him your life, you lil sandpiper. And, my sakes, the straight like him you are, too!”
“Isn't she?” said Nancy. “If I wasn't thinking the same myself! Couldn't look straighter like him if she'd been his born child; now, could she? And the curls, too, and the eyes! Well, well!”
“If she'd been a boy, now——” began Pete.