“‘Nancy, Rhody’s got a boy!’
“Laws! I was jist as s’prised as ef I’d never thought of sich a thing, an’ says I, ‘Who tole you?’
“‘Ole man Curtis,’ says he, ‘an’ he’s that sot up he wants you to come right over.’
“‘An’ so I will,’ says I. ‘The blessed darlin’; an’ it’s a boy, an’ our Sarah’s is a boy, too. Well, that beats me.’ An’ I ’low ’twas odd, Mis’ Johnson;” and Mrs. Johnson “’lowed” it was, too, and the story went on:
“In a day or two I managed to go over to the Curtis place, an’ though Mary Ann Curtis didn’t seem over-pleased to see me, I’ll say that for her, she treated me well enough, and asked me right up stairs to see Rhody and the baby. My! but my girl was glad to see me!
“‘Aunt Nancy,’ she says, ‘is Sarah’s baby bigger’n mine?’ and she turned down the kiver and showed me the littlest mite of a boy, with such a wrinkled old face! I wonder what does make a pore weakly baby look so much like old folks, anyhow. Did you ever notice it, Mis’ Johnson?”
“Oh, yes, often,” said Mrs. Johnson. “There was my Silas, looked just like his Grandfather Johnson when he was born. But was her baby weakly?”
“I saw it was in a minute,” said Aunt Nancy, “but I never let on. I looked at the baby an’ praised it all I could—said it wasn’t as big as Sary’s, but size was nothin’.
“Mis’ Curtis she sniffed sort o’ scornful, an’ says she, ‘The child might have been bigger ef its mother’d knowed how to take keer of herself;’ an’ then she says, ‘Well, I ain’t no time to be a-foolin’. I must go to work.’