no; what a boy you are to eat!” cried Polly, merrily.
“Just you come and smell sawdust all day, and see if you don’t eat,” cried Tom. “Here, what is it?”
“Oh, you must wait. There, what a shame! and you haven’t kissed baby.”
She ran out to fetch the baby and hold it up to him to be kissed, while she looked at him with all a young mother’s pride in the little one, of which the great sturdy fellow had grown so fond.
“It makes me so happy, Tom,” she said, with the tears in her eyes.
“Happy, does it, lass?”
“Oh, yes. So – so happy,” she cried, nestling to him with her baby in her arms, and sighing with her sense of safety and content, as the strong muscles held her to the broad breast. “I was afraid, Tom, that you might not care for it – that you would think it a trouble, and – and – ”
“That you were a silly little wife, and full of foolish fancies,” he cried, kissing her tenderly.
“Yes, yes, Tom, I was,” she cried, smiling up at him through her tears. “But come – your tea. Here, Budge.”
Budge had been a baby herself once – a workhouse baby – and she looked it still, at fourteen. Not a thin starveling, but a sturdy workhouse baby, who had thriven and grown strong on simple oatmeal fare. Budge was stout and rosy, and daily putting on flesh at Tom Morrison’s cottage, where her duty was to “help missus, and nuss the bairn.”
But nearly always in Polly’s sight; for the first baby was too sacred a treasure in that cottage home to be trusted to any hands for long.
She was a good girl, though, was Budge; her two faults prominent being that when she cried she howled – terribly, and that “the way” – to use Tom Morrison’s words – “she punished a quartern loaf was a sight to see.”
Budge, fat, red-faced, and round-eyed, with her hair cut square at the ends so that it wouldn’t stay tucked behind her ears, but kept coming down over her eyes, came running to take baby, and was soon planted on a three-legged stool on the clean, red-tiled floor, where she began shaking her head – and hair – over the baby, like a dark-brown mop, making the little eyes stare up at it wonderingly; and now and then a faint, rippling smile played round the lips, and brightened the eyes, to Budge’s great delight.
For just then Budge was hard pressed. Workhouse matron teaching had taught her that when she went out to service it would be rude to stare at people when they were eating; and now there was the pouring out of tea, and spreading of butter, and cutting of bread and bacon going on in a way that was perfectly maddening to a hungry young stomach, especially if that stomach happened to be large, and its owner growing.
Budge’s stomach was large, and Budge was growing, so she was hard pressed: and do what she would, she could not keep her eyes on the baby, for, by a kind of attraction, they would wander to the tea-table, and that loaf upon which Tom Morrison was spreading a thick coating of yellow butter, prior to hacking off a slice.
Poor Budge’s eyes dilated with wonder and joy as, when the slice was cut off, nearly two inches thick, Tom stuck his knife into it, and held the mass out to her, with —
“Here, lass, you look hungry. Tuck that away.”
Budge would have made a bob, but doing so would have thrown the baby on the floor; so she contented herself with saying “Thanky, sir,” and proceeded to make semicircles round the edge of the slice, and to drop crumbs on the baby’s face.
“Well, lass,” said Tom, as Polly handed him his great cup of tea, “about the christening? When’s it to be?”
“On Sunday, Tom, and that’s what I wanted to tell you – it’s my surprise.”
“What’s a surprise?”
“Why, about the godmothers, dear. Why, I declare,” she pouted, “you don’t seem to mind a bit.”
“Oh, but I do,” he said, “only I’m so hungry. Well, what about the godmothers?”
“Why, Miss Julia and Miss Cynthia have promised to stand. Isn’t it grand?”
“Grand? Oh, I don’t know.”
“Tom!”
“Well, I suppose it is grand, but I don’t know. It’s all right if they like it. But about poor Jock?”
“Oh, that won’t make any difference, dear. They’ve promised, and I know they won’t go back. They’ll be the two godmothers, and you the godfather.”
“Of course,” cried Tom, eating away; “two godmothers and a godfather, eh, lass? that’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Tom,” said the little woman, eagerly attending to her husband’s wants, “and two godfathers and a godmother if it’s a boy.”
“It’ll be a grand christening, won’t it, Polly?” said Tom.
“Oh, no, dear. Miss Julia and Miss Cynthia are the dearest and best of girls, and they have no pride. Miss Julia talked to me the other day just like a friend.”
“I say,” cried Tom, eagerly.
“What, dear?”
“Why not do the thing in style while we’re about it. What do you say to asking young Mr Cyril to be godfather?”
If Tom Morrison had looked up then he would have been startled at the livid look in his young wife’s face, but he was too intent upon his tea, and Polly recovered herself and said —
“Oh, no, dear, that would not do, and the young ladies would not like it. Look here, Tom.”
Polly tripped to a basket, from which she produced a white cloak and hood, trimmed with swan’s-down; and these she held up before her husband, flushed and excited, as, in her girlish way, she wondered whether he would like them.
Budge left off eating, and wished for a white dress on the spot, trimmed with silk braid, like that.
“Say,” said Tom, thickly, speaking with his mouth fall, “they’re fine, arn’t they? – cost a lot o’ money.”
“No,” said Polly, gleefully, “they cost nothing, Tom. Miss Julia made me a present of the stuff, and I made them.”
“Did you, though?” he said, looking at her little fingers, admiringly. “You’re a clever girl, Polly; but I often wonder how it was you came to take up with a rough chap like me.”
Polly looked up in his steady, honest eyes, and rested one hand upon his, and gazed lovingly at him, as he went on —
“My old woman said it was because I’d got a cottage, and an acre of land of my own.”
“Did she say so, Tom?”
“Yes,” he said, taking her hand, patting it, and gazing up in the pretty rustic face he called his own; “but I told her you were a silly little girl, who would have me if I’d got a cottage and an acre less than nothing to call my own.”
“And you told the truth, Tom,
