my boy; for he was the eldest. But you may be pretty sure he carried about his brothers and sisters that came after him.”
“Wouldn’t he take care of them, just!” said Charlie.
“I wish I had been one of them,” said Constance.
“You are one of them, my Connie. Now he is so great and so strong that he can carry father and mother and all of us in his bosom.”
Then we sung a child’s hymn in praise of the God of little children, and the little ones went to bed. Constance was tired now, and we left her with Wynnie. We too went early to bed.
About midnight my wife and I awoke together—at least neither knew which waked the other. The wind was still raving about the house, with lulls between its charges.
“There’s a child crying!” said my wife, starting up.
I sat up too, and listened.
“There is some creature,” I granted.
“It is an infant,” insisted my wife. “It can’t be either of the boys.”
I was out of bed in a moment, and my wife the same instant. We hurried on some of our clothes, going to the windows and listening as we did so. We seemed to hear the wailing through the loudest of the wind, and in the lulls were sure of it. But it grew fainter as we listened. The night was pitch dark. I got a lantern, and hurried out. I went round the house till I came under our bed-room windows, and there listened. I heard it, but not so clearly as before. I set out as well as I could judge in the direction of the sound. I could find nothing. My lantern lighted only a few yards around me, and the wind was so strong that it blew through every chink, and threatened momently to blow it out. My wife was by my side before I knew she was coming.
“My dear!” I said, “it is not fit for you to be out.”
“It is as fit for me as for a child, anyhow,” she said. “Do listen.”
It was certainly no time for expostulation. All the mother was awake in Ethelwyn’s bosom. It would have been cruelty to make her go in, though she was indeed ill-fitted to encounter such a night-wind.
Another wail reached us. It seemed to come from a thicket at one corner of the lawn. We hurried thither. Again a cry, and we knew we were much nearer to it. Searching and searching we went.
“There it is!” Ethelwyn almost screamed, as the feeble light of the lantern fell on a dark bundle of something under a bush. She caught at it. It gave another pitiful wail—the poor baby of some tramp, rolled up in a dirty, ragged shawl, and tied round with a bit of string, as if it had been a parcel of clouts. She set off running with it to the house, and I followed, much fearing she would miss her way in the dark, and fall. I could hardly get up with her, so eager was she to save the child. She darted up to her own room, where the fire was not yet out.
“Run to the kitchen, Harry, and get some hot water. Take the two jugs there—you can empty them in the sink: you won’t know where to find anything. There will be plenty in the boiler.”
By the time I returned with the hot water, she had taken off the child’s covering, and was sitting with it, wrapped in a blanket, before the fire. The little thing was cold as a stone, and now silent and motionless. We had found it just in time. Ethelwyn ordered me about as if I had been a nursemaid. I poured the hot water into a footbath.
“Some cold water, Harry. You would boil the child.”
“You made me throw away the cold water,” I said, laughing.
“There’s some in the bottles,” she returned. “Make haste.”
I did try to make haste, but I could not be quick enough to satisfy Ethelwyn.
“The child will be dead,” she cried, “before we get it in the water.”
She had its rags off in a moment—there was very little to remove after the shawl. How white the little thing was, though dreadfully neglected! It was a girl—not more than a few weeks old, we agreed. Her little heart was still beating feebly; and as she was a well-made, apparently healthy infant, we had every hope of recovering her. And we were not disappointed. She began to move her little legs and arms with short, convulsive motions.
“Do you know where the dairy is, Harry?” asked my wife, with no great compliment to my bumps of locality, which I had always flattered myself were beyond the average in development.
“I think I do,” I answered.
“Could you tell which was this night’s milk, now?”
“There will be less cream on it,” I answered.
“Bring a little of that and some more hot water. I’ve got some sugar here. I wish we had a bottle.”
I executed her commands faithfully. By the time I returned the child was lying on her lap clean and dry—a fine baby I thought. Ethelwyn went on talking to her, and praising her as if she had not only been the finest specimen of mortality in the world, but her own child to boot. She got her to take a few spoonfuls of milk and water, and then the little thing fell fast asleep.
Ethelwyn’s nursing days were not so far gone by that she did not know where her baby’s clothes were. She gave me the child, and going to a wardrobe in the room brought out some night-things, and put them on. I could not understand in the least why the sleeping darling must be indued with little chemise, and flannel, and nightgown, and I do not know what all, requiring a world of nice care, and a hundred turnings to and fro, now on its little stomach, now on its back, now sitting up, now lying down, when it would have slept just as well, and I venture to think much more comfortably, if laid in blankets and well covered over. But I had never ventured to interfere with any of my own children, devoutly believing up to this moment, though in a dim unquestioning way, that there must be some hidden feminine wisdom in the whole process; and now that I had begun to question it, I found that my opportunity had long gone by, if I had ever had one. And after all there may be some reason for it, though I confess I do strongly suspect that all these matters are so wonderfully complicated in order that the girl left in the woman may have her heart’s content of playing with her doll; just as the woman hid in the girl expends no end of lovely affection upon the dull stupidity of wooden cheeks and a body of sawdust. But it was a delight to my heart to see how Ethelwyn could not be satisfied without treating the foundling in precisely the same fashion as one of her own. And if this was a necessary preparation for what, should follow, I would be the very last to complain of it.
We went to bed again, and the forsaken child of some half-animal mother, now perhaps asleep in some filthy lodging for tramps, lay in my Ethelwyn’s bosom. I loved her the more for it; though, I confess, it would have been very painful to me had she shown it possible for her to treat the baby otherwise, especially after what we had been talking about that same evening.
So we had another child in the house, and nobody knew anything about it but ourselves two. The household had never been disturbed by all the going and coming. After everything had been done for her, we had a good laugh over the whole matter, and then Ethelwyn fell a-crying.
“Pray for the poor thing, Harry,” she sobbed, “before you come to bed.”
I knelt down, and said:
“O Lord our Father, this is as much thy child and as certainly sent to us as if she had been born of us. Help us to keep the child for thee. Take thou care of thy own, and teach us what to do with her, and how to order our ways
