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 to begin now; besides, what kind er shape suppose your baby’ll be, if I don’t pin it up snug and tight now?”

Feeble as I then was, I could do little for myself or the babe, but I would sometimes quiet its cries by stealthily loosening its clothes as it lay by my side. My child was scarcely two days old before my kind neighbours began to pour in with their sympathy and congratulations. Too timid to refuse them admittance, and too weak to endure company, I suffered much, and yet the scenes were sometimes so comical I could not help laughing. Some days quite a number would call at once. Mrs. Higgins, and Aunt Lucy, and old Mrs. Gove, were in one day together.

“What a nice fat baby!” said the last, who had just entered; “for all the world the very image of its father”&mdash;(it had just been pronounced “as like to me as two peas”)&mdash;“and not a mark about it;&mdash;why my John has an apple on his forehead, and a strawberry on his great toe. I hope you’ve given the little thing some physic, Mrs. Bagly.”

“La, yes,” said the latter, bridling up; “I always gives caster ile the first thing&mdash;nothing better, you know.”

“And then, I suppose, you feed it some, till its mother has milk sufficient?”

“The little darling don’t suffer, I can tell you,” answered the nurse, proudly. “I take the top of the milk and sweeten it up well, and it has as much as it can take. Mrs. Wadsworth talked about leaving things to nater, but I tell her I guess nater would leave her if I didn’t stick by.”

“I hope, in all conscience, you won’t get any of these new-fangled notions into your head,” said Mrs. Higgins. “You’ll sartinly kill your baby if you do. Why our minister’s wife is half crazy with her book larning about babies. She washes hers all over in cold water every morning, and e’en amost starves it, too; for no matter if it cries ever so hard, she won’t feed it till the time comes, as she calls it, and that’s once in three hours. If she warn’t the minister’s wife, I believe the selectmen would take the matter up; but I eased my conscience by giving her a piece of my mind.”

“I didn’t say a word when she was at our house,” said the