"Well, I never!" said Biddy, bursting into Ruth's room in her usual
thunder-clap way, and seating herself on the edge of a chair, as she
polished her face with the skirt of her dress. "As sure as my name
is Biddy, I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. Well, I've been
expecting it. Folks that have ears can't help hearing when folks
quarrel."
"What are you talking about?" said Ruth. "Who has quarreled? It is
nothing that concerns me."
"Don't it though?" replied Biddy. "I'm thinking it _will_ concern ye
to pack up bag and baggage, and be off out of the house; for that's
what we are all coming to, and all for Mrs. Skiddy. You see it's just
here, ma'am. Masther has been threatnin' for a long time to go to
Californy, where the gould is as plenty as blackberries. Well,
misthress tould him, if ever he said the like o' that again, he'd rue
it; and you know, ma'am, it's she that has a temper. Well, yesterday
I heard high words again; and, sure enough, after dinner to-day, she
went off, taking Sammy and Johnny, and laving the bit nursing baby on
his hands, and the boarders and all. And it's Biddy McFlanigan who'll
be off, ma'am, and not be made a pack-horse of, to tend that teething
child, and be here, and there, and everywhere in a minute. And so I
come to bid you good-bye."
"But, Biddy--"
"Don't be afther keeping me, ma'am; Pat has shouldhered me trunk, and
ye see I can't be staying when things is as they is."
* * * * *
The incessant cries of Mrs. Skiddy's bereaved baby soon bore ample
testimony to the truth of Biddy's narration, appealing to Ruth's
motherly sympathies so vehemently, that she left her room and went down
to offer her assistance.
There sat Mr. John Skiddy, the forlorn widower, the ambitious
Californian, in the middle of the kitchen, in his absconded wife's
rocking-chair, trotting a seven months' baby on the sharp apex of his
knee, alternately singing, whistling, and wiping the perspiration from
his forehead, while the little Skiddy threw up its arms in the most
frantic way, and held its breath with rage, at the awkward attempts of
its dry nurse to restore peace to the family.
"Let me sweeten a little cream and water and feed that child for you,
Mr. Skiddy," said Ruth. "I think he is hungry."
"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Hall," said Skiddy, with a man's determined
aversion to owning 'checkmated.' "I am getting along famously with the
little darling. Papa _will_ feed him, so he _will_," said Skiddy; and,
turning the maddened baby flat on his back, he poured down a whole
tea-spoonful of the liquid at once; the natural consequence of which was
a milky _jet d'eau_ on his face, neckcloth, and vest, from the irritated
baby, who resented the insult with all his mother's spirit.
Ruth adroitly looked out the window, while Mr. Skiddy wiped his face
and sopped his neckcloth, after which she busied herself in picking up
the ladles, spoons, forks, dredging-boxes, mortars, pestles, and other
culinary implements, with which the floor was strewn, in the vain
attempt to propitiate the distracted infant.
"I think I _will_ spare the little dear to you a few minutes," said
Skiddy, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, "while I run over to the
bakery to get a loaf for tea. Mrs. Skiddy has probably been unexpectedly
detained, and Biddy is so afraid of her labor in her absence, that she
has taken French leave. I shall be back soon," said Skiddy, turning away
in disgust from the looking-glass, as he caught sight of his limpsey
dicky and collapsed shirt-bosom.
Ruth took the poor worried baby tenderly, laid it on its stomach across
her lap, then loosening its frock strings, began rubbing its little fat
shoulders with her velvet palm. There was a maternal magnetism in that
touch; baby knew it! he stopped crying and winked his swollen eyelids
with the most luxurious satisfaction, as much as to say, there, now,
that's something like!
Gently Ruth drew first one, then the other, of the magnetized baby's
chubby arms from its frock sleeves, substituting a comfortable loose
night-dress for the tight and heated frock; then she carefully drew
off its shoe, admiring the while the beauty of the little blue veined,
dimpled foot, while Katy, hush as any mouse, looked on delightedly from
her little cricket on the hearth, and Nettie, less philosophical, was
more than half inclined to cry at what she considered an infringement of
her rights.
Mr. Skiddy's reflections as he walked to the bakery were of a motley
character. Upon the whole, he inclined to the opinion that it was
"not good for man to be alone," especially with a nursing baby. The
premeditated and unmixed malice of Mrs. Skiddy in leaving the baby,
instead of Sammy or Johnny, was beyond question. Still, he could not
believe that her desire for revenge would outweigh all her maternal
feelings. She would return by-and-bye; but where could she have gone?
People cannot travel with an empty purse; but, perhaps even now, at
some tantalizing point of contiguity, she was laughing at the success of
her nefarious scheme; and Mr. Skiddy's face reddened at the thought, and
his arms instinctively took an a-kimbo attitude.
But then, perhaps, she _never meant_ to come back. What was he to do
with that baby? A wet-nurse would cost him six dollars a week; and, as
to bringing up little Tommy by hand, city milk would soon finish him.
And, to do Mr. Skiddy justice, though no Socrates, he was a good father
to his children.
And now it was nearly dark. Was he doomed to sit up all night, tired as
he was, with Tommy in one hand, and a spoon and pewter porringer in the
other? Or, worse still, walk the floor in white array, till his joints,
candle, and patience gave out? Then, there were the boarders to be seen
to! He never realized before how _many_ irons Mrs. Skiddy had daily in
the fire. There was Mr. Thompson, and Mr. Johnson, on the first floor,
(and his face grew hot as he thought of it,) had seen him in the kitchen
looking so Miss-Nancy-like, as he superintended pots, kettles, and
stews. _Stews?_ there was not a dry thread on him that minute, although
a cold north wind was blowing. Never mind, he was not such a fool as to
tell of his little troubles; so he entered the bakery and bought an
extra pie, and a loaf of plum-cake, for tea, to hoodwink the boarders
into the belief that Mrs. Skiddy's presence was not at all necessary to
a well-provided table.
Tea went off quite swimmingly, with Mr. John Skiddy at the urn. The
baby, thanks to Ruth's maternal management, lay sweetly sleeping in his
little wicker cradle, dreaming of a distant land flowing with milk and
honey, and _looking_ as if he was destined to a protracted nap; although
it was very perceptible that Mr. Skiddy looked anxious when a door was
shut hard, or a knife or fork dropped on the table; and he had several
times been seen to close his teeth tightly over his lip, when a heavy
cart rumbled mercilessly past.
Tea being over, the boarders dispersed their various ways; Ruth
notifying Mr. Skiddy of her willingness to take the child whenever it
became unmanageable. Then Mr. Skiddy, very gingerly, and with a cat-like
tread, put away the tea-things, muttering an imprecation at the lid of
the tea-pot, as he went, for falling off. Then, drawing the evening
paper from his pocket, and unfurling it, (with one eye on the cradle,)
he put up his weary legs and commenced reading the news.
Hark! a muffled noise from the cradle! Mr. Skiddy started, and applied
his toe vigorously to the rocker--it was no use. He whistled--it didn't
suit. He sang--it was a decided failure. Little Skiddy had caught sight
of the pretty bright candle, and it was his present intention to scream
till he was taken up to investigate it.
Miserable Skiddy! He recollected, now, alas! too late, that Mrs. Skiddy
always carefully screened the light from Tommy's eyes while sleeping.
He began to be conscious of a growing respect for Mrs. Skiddy, and a
growing aversion to _her_ baby. Yes; in that moment of vexation, with
that unread evening paper before him, he actually called it _her_ baby.
How the victimized man worried through the long evening and night--how
he tried to propitiate the little tempest with the castor, the
salt-cellar, its mother's work-box, and last, but not least, a silver
cup he had received for his valor from the Atlantic Fire Company--how
the baby, all-of-a-twist, like Dickens' young hero kept asking for
"more"--how he laid it on its back, and laid it on its side, and laid
it on its stomach, and propped it up on one end in a house made of
pillows, and placed the candle at the foot of the bed, in the vain
hope that that luminary might be graciously deemed by the infant
tyrant a substitute for his individual exertions--and how, regardless
of all these philanthropic efforts, little Skiddy stretched out his
arms imploringly, and rooted suggestively at his father's breast, in a
way to move a heart of stone--and how Mr. Skiddy said several words
not to be found in the catechism--and how the daylight found him as
pale as a potato sprout in a cellar, with all sorts of diagonal lines
tattoed over his face by enraged little finger nails--and how the
little horn, that for years had curled up so gracefully toward his
nose, was missing from the corner of his moustache--are they not all
written in the ambitious Californian's repentant memory?