This, therefore, is the story of her:—Some four years ago her husband
brought home a baby, which he said he found lying in the street, and
which they concluded to adopt. About a year after this he brought home
another, and the good woman thought she could stand that one too. A
similar period passed away, when one evening he opened the door and
fell headlong into the room, swearing with studied correctness at a dog
which had tripped him up, but which upon inspection turned out to be
another baby. Margaret’s suspicion was aroused, but to allay his she
hastened to implore him to adopt that darling also, to which, after
some slight hesitation, he consented. Another twelvemonth rolled into
eternity, when one evening the lady heard a noise in the back yard, and
going out she saw her husband labouring at the windlass of the well
with unwonted industry. As the bucket neared the top he reached down
and extracted another infant, exactly like the former ones, and holding
it up, explained to the astonished matron: “Look at this, now; did you
ever see such a sweet young one go a-campaignin’ about the country
without a lantern and a-tumblin’ into wells? There, take the poor
little thing in to the fire, and get off its wet clothes.” It suddenly
flashed across his mind that he had neglected an obvious precaution—the
clothes were not wet—and he hastily added: “There’s no tellin’ what
would have become of it, a-climbin’ down that rope, if I hadn’t seen it
afore it got down to the water.”
Silently the good wife took that infant into the house and disrobed it;
sorrowfully she laid it alongside its little brothers and sister; long
and bitterly she wept over the quartette; and then with one tender look
at her lord and master, smoking in solemn silence by the fire, and
resembling them with all his might, she gathered her shawl about her
bowed shoulders and went away into the night.