And at that moment, another woman, dressed in the same outlandish style as herself, brought up a little round parcel, that looked like a bundle of clothes, and, before I had time to say a word, or shut the door, or fly, placed it in my arms; and then both the women showed their glistening teeth, stretching from ear to ear, and screamed out in chorus, "You vill so lubb dee babba—it is such a pretty dear!"
I stood in a state of stupefaction for some time, but the dark-visaged visitors by no means shared my inactivity; they ran, and screamed, and bustled; trotted down stairs, jumped up again, and filled the whole passage; then the drawing-room; then the little bedroom behind it, with trunks, and bags, and band-boxes, and bird-cages full of parrots, and cloaks, and shawls; till at last, when I started from my trance—in doing which, nearly let the baby fall—I found my whole house taken possession of, and the two women apparently as much at home as if they had lived with me twenty years.
I unrolled the shawls and things from the baby's face. It was an infant about a year old, and opened its eyes as I was looking at it, and looked so wisely and sagaciously at me in return, that I could almost believe it knew as much of the proceeding as I did—and this it might very easily have done, without being a miracle of premature information, for I had not the remotest conception of what the whole thing was about. So I laid the child on the sofa, and went to the bell to ring for a policeman.
"Oh, don't ring him bell, ve are so comfitable here!" said one of the women. "Yesha vill go home 'gain, and I vill habb little bed in t'oder room, and vill sleep vid dee babb—so nice!"
"Oh, you will—will you? We'll see about that," I answered, astonished at the woman's impudence. "I will get you and your little lump of Newcastle"—this was an allusion to her colour—"turned out into the street."
"Oh, Massa Moggan vill soon be here! Him wrote letter a veek since; but him vill come to-day."
"Oh!"——
So I did not pull the bell, but looked at the two intruders just as Macready looks at the witches in Macbeth; for Mr Morgan was my legal adviser, and had been my uncle's agent, and transacted all the business connected with the succession; and I had such confidence in him that I never opened his letters, and had of course thrown the note they talked of into the great wooden box that was the receptacle of all my correspondence.
In the mean time, the baby began to squall.
"Take the brat away, and I'll tell a little bit of my mind to Mr Morgan," I said, grinding my teeth in a horrible passion; and, in a moment, the two women disappeared with the child, roaring and screaming, as if they had stuck pins into it on purpose to drive me mad.