HOW THE BABY WAS SAVED
From 'The Seamstress's Story'
"Yes, Ma'm'selle Adèle," said the seamstress, "the real happiness of this world is not so unevenly distributed after all." Louise, as she said this, took from the reserve in the bosom of her dress a lot of pins, and applied them deftly to the trimming of a skirt which I was holding for her.
"A sufficiently comfortable doctrine," I answered; "but it does seem to me as if some people were born to live and to die unhappy."
"It is only folks who never find anybody to love enough; and I think it's nobody's fault but their own."
"But my good Louise, wouldn't you have suffered much less last year, when you came so near losing your boy, if you hadn't cared so much for him?"
I was only drawing her on, you see; Louise's chat was the greatest resource to me at that time.
"Why, Ma'm'selle Adèle, you are surely joking. You'd as well tell me to cut off my feet to save my shoes. You'll know one of these days—and not so far off neither, maybe—how mighty easy and sensible it would be not to love your children. They are a worry, too; but oh the delight of 'em! I'd like to have had anybody tell me not to love my darling because it might grieve me, when he lay there in his mother's lap, with blue lips, gasping for his breath, and well-nigh dead, his face blackish, and his hands like this piece of wax. You could see that everything was going against him; and with his great big eyes he was staring in my face, until I felt as if the child was tugging at my very heart-strings. I kept smiling at him, though, through the tears that blinded me, hard as I tried to hide them. Oh! such tears are bitter salt indeed, Ma'm'selle! And there was my poor husband on his knees, making paper figures to amuse him, and singing a funny song he used to laugh at. Now and then the corners of his mouth would pucker, and his cheeks would wrinkle a little bit under the eyes. You could tell he was still amused, but in such a dreamy way. Oh! our child seemed no longer with us, but behind a veil, like. Wait a minute. You must excuse me, for I can't help crying when I think of it."
And the poor creature drew out her handkerchief and fairly sobbed aloud. In the midst of it however she smiled and said: "Well, that's over now; 'twas nothing, and I'm too silly. And Ma'm'selle, here I've gone and cried upon your mother's dress, and that's a pretty business."