John Heath burst out laughing. "You can have my share of it, George," said he; "we've got babies enough of our own at home." And with that he ran away and began to look again for brooms and buckets along the shore.
But I loved my little Tess from that first sight of her, and I was glad that John had said that I might have his share in her; though of course, because I first saw her and first touched her, he had no real share in her at all. So I wrapped her up again as well as I could in her blankets—leaving the wet sheet lying there—and set off for home along the shore, carrying her in my arms. Tired enough I got before I had lugged my load that long way, and up the cliff, and so to our house door. In the doorway my mother was standing, and I put the bundle in her arms. "Lord save us!" said my mother. "What's the boy got here?"
"Mother," said I, "it's a little beautiful live baby—and I found it, and it's mine!"
III
That was the way that my Tess came to me: and I know now how good my father and my mother were in letting me keep her for my own—they with only what my father could make by his fishing to live on, and the wolf never very far away from the door. But the look of those black eyes of hers and the smile in them won my mother's love to her, just as it had won mine; and my mother told me, too, long years afterward, that her heart was hungry for the girl baby that God had not given her—and she said that Tess seemed to be her very own baby from the minute that she took her close to her breast from my tired little arms.
As to where Tess came from—from what port in all the wide world the ship sailed that brought her to us—we had no way of knowing. Nothing but Tess in her bundle came ashore from the wreck; and what was left of the ship burrowed down into the sands so fast and so far that there was to be seen of her only a broken bit of her stern-post at the storm's ending. Even after the set of the currents against her sunken hull, on the next spring tide, had cut through the Barnard Bank and so made the Wreck Gat, no part of her but her broken stern-post ever showed. Tess herself, though, told us what her own name was, and so gave us a notion as to what land she belonged to; but we should have been none the wiser for her telling it—she talking in words that were the same as Greek to us—if the Vicar had not lent us a hand.
My finding the baby made a stir in the whole village, and everybody had to have a look at her. In the afternoon along came the Vicar too—smiling through his gold spectacles, as he always did, and swinging his black cane. By that time, having had all the milk she could hold, and a good nap, and more milk again, Tess was as bright as a new sixpence: just as though she had not passed that morning nearer to death than ever she was like to pass again and live. She was lying snug in my mother's arms before the fire, and in her own fashion was talking away at a great rate—and my mother's heart quite breaking because her pretty chatter was all in heathen words that nobody could get at the meaning of. But the Vicar, being very learned, understood her in a minute. "Why, it's Spanish," said he. "It's Spanish as sure as you're born! She's calling you 'madrecita,' Mrs. May—which is the same as 'motherkin,' you know. But I can't make even a guess at the rest of it. Everything ends in 'ita'—real baby-talk."
"Do kindly ask her, sir, what her blessed little name is," said my mother. "It'll bring her a deal closer to us to know her name."
"I'll try her in Latin," said the Vicar—"that's the best that I can manage—and it'll be hit or miss if she understands." And then he bent over the little tot—she being then a bit over two years old, my mother thought—and asked her what her name was in Latin words.
For a minute there was a puzzled look in the big black eyes of her and her brow puckered. And then she smiled all over her pretty face and answered, as clear as you please: "Tesita." That a baby no bigger than that understood Latin always has seemed to me most like a miracle of anything that ever I have known!