Page:Duty and Inclination. Volume 3.pdf/168

166 about two years old, dropped from its hand a glittering toy, bestudded with valuable gems; Rosilia, in hastening to restore it, sought at the same time to embrace the infant, which clung the closer to its nurse; but won by Rosilia's encouraging smile and accent, it soon nestled in her bosom.

"What a sweet child," said she to the young woman; "you are, doubtless, the mother; and yet there is no resemblance."

"I am but her nurse," replied the young woman; "but I love her as much as if she were my own."

The child, stretching forward, playfully sought to seize Rosilia's flowers, who, forming them into a wreath, decked the head of the "sweet little cherub." In beginning to give articulation to sounds, she frequently lisped the word "papa," which still further increased the curiosity of Rosilia: the Doctor having engaged the nurse in conversation, she addressed herself to an old infirm woman who sat in a corner of the cottage, employed at her spinning-wheel, and requested to be informed who had the happiness of being mother to so lovely a child. She was answered, that the child had been brought to the cottage by her daughter, a few months since, in company with a lady, whose name she did not recollect. The lady was not the child's mother, nor even any relation, being sister merely to the child's godmother; but both seemed to take a great interest in it, adding that they would not have entrusted so precious a charge with her daughter, had they not