“I have, in a bantam Biddy, parading her first brood in the hen-yard, or a youthful duck, leading her first little downy flock to the water.”
“Ha, blasphemer! are you there?” cries Miss Nellie, with a bright smile, and a brighter blush. Blasphemer’s other name is a tolerably good one,—Edward Norton,—though he is oftenest called “Our Ned.” He is the sole male representative of a wealthy old New England family,—the pride and darling of four pretty sisters, “the only son of his mother, and she a widow,” who adores him,—“a likely youth, just twenty-one,” handsome, brilliant, and standing six feet high in his stockings. Yet, in spite of all these unfavorable circumstances, he is a very good sort of a fellow. He is just home from the model college of the Commonwealth, where he learned to smoke, and, I blush to say, has a cigar in hand at this moment, just as he has been summoned from the garden by his pet sister, Kate, half-wild with delight and excitement. With him comes a brother, according to the law, and after the spirit,—a young, slender, fair-haired man, but with an indescribable something of paternal importance about him. He is the other proprietor of baby, and steps forward with a laugh and a “Heh, my little water-nymph, my Iris!” and by the bath-tub kneeling, catches a moist kiss from smiling baby lips, and a sudden wilting shower on shirt-front and collar, from moister baby hands.
Young collegian pauses on the threshold, essaying to look lofty and sarcastic, for a moment. Then his eye rests on Nellie Lee’s blushing face, on the red, smiling lips, the braids of gold, sprinkled with shining drops,—meets those sweet, shy eyes, and a sudden, mysterious feeling, soft and vague and tender, floods his gay young heart. He looks at baby again. “’Tis a pretty sight, upon my word! Let me throw away my cigar before I come nearer; it is incense too profane for such pure rites. Now give me a peep at Dian-the less! How the little witch revels in the water! A small Undine. Jolly, isn’t it, baby? Why, Louise, I did not know that Floy was so lovely, such a perfect little creature. How fair she is? Why, her flesh, where it is not rosy, is of the pure, translucent whiteness of a water-lily.”
No response to this tribute, for baby has been in the water more than long enough, and must be taken out, willy, nilly. Decidedly nilly it proves; baby proceeds to demonstrate that she is not altogether cherubic, by kicking and screaming lustily, and striking out frantically with her little, dripping hands. But Madonna wraps her in soft linen, rolls her and pats her, till she grows good and merry again, and laughs through her pretty tears.
But the brief storm has been enough to clear the nursery of all save grandmamma and Auntie Kate, who draw nearer to witness the process of drying and dressing. Tenderly the mother rubs the dainty, soft skin, till every dimple gives up its last hidden droplet; then, with many a kiss, and smile, and coo, she robes the little form in fairy-like garments of cambric, lace, flannel, soft as a moth’s wing, and delicate embroidery. The small, restless feet are caught, and encased in comical little hose, and shod with Titania’s own slippers. Then the light golden locks are brushed and twined into tendril-like curls, and lo! the beautiful labor of love is finished. Baby is bathed and dressed for the day.
HORATIO ALGER.
