"Yes, mamma, _my_ baby; don't you hear it _cry_? 'Tis _hungry!_" And she
started to run up-stairs, but her mother called her back.
"Why, Nannette, what ails you? What do you mean about _your_ baby?" she
asked in surprise.
"Why MY BABY, mamma! I bought it for a quarter of a dollar! a baby that
_cries_--not a mis'ble make b'leve baby. Oh, how it _does_ cry! it must
be _awful_ hungry!" And away she darted up the stairs.
Her father and mother arose from their seats in perfect amazement, and
followed their little girl to her room, where, lying upon her bed, was
a bundle from which came a baby's cries. Nannette's mother began to
unfasten the wrappings, and sure enough there was a wee little girl not
more than two or three weeks old looking up at them with two great wet
eyes.
Of course Nannette was questioned, and she related all she could
remember of her talk with the woman from whom she bought the baby. Her
papa said perhaps the baby had been stolen, and that something had been
given to it to make it sleep.
"But what shall we do with it?" asked both the father and mother. "_Do_
with it?" cried Nannette. "Why, it is _my_ baby, mamma! I paid all my
money for it. It _cries_, it does! I will keep it always."
So it was decided, that the baby should stay, if nobody came to claim
it, which nobody ever did, although Nannette's papa put an advertisement
in a newspaper about it.
It would take a larger book than this one in which to tell all of
Nannette's experiences in taking care of "_my_ baby," as she called the
little girl, whom she afterward named Victoria, in honor of the then
young queen of England.
Victoria is now a woman, and she lives, as does Nannette, in the city of
Philadelphia. She has a little girl of her own, "mos' six" who is named
Nannette for the good little "sister-mother," who once upon a time
bought her mamma of a strange woman for a quarter of a dollar, as she
thought. And this other little Nannette never tires of hearing the
romantic story of the indolent "Didy" and the "real little live baby
that will _cry_."