Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/100

 “Not as I knows on. There ain’t much here of anything, I kin tell yez. Min was pore and as shiftless as Jim. Ef ye opens that drawer over there yez’ll find a few baby clo’es. Best take them along.”

Rilla got the clothes—the cheap, sleazy garments the poor mother had made ready as best she could. But this did not solve the pressing problem of the baby's transportation. Rilla looked helplessly round. Oh, for mother—or Susan! Her eyes fell on an enormous blue soup tureen at the back of the dresser.

“Can I have this to—to lay him in?” she asked.

“Well, ’tain’t mine but I guess yez kin take it. Don’t smash it if yez can help—Jim might make a fuss about it if he comes back alive,—which he sure will, seein’ he ain't any good. He brung that old tureen out from England with him—said it’d always been in the family. Him and Min never used it—never had enough soup to put in it—but Jim thought the world of it. He was mighty perticuler about some things but it didn’t worry him none that there weren’t much in the way o’ eatables to put in the dishes.”

For the first time in her life Rilla Blythe touched a baby—lifted it—rolled it in a blanket, trembling with nervousness lest she drop it or—or—break it. Then she put it in the soup tureen.

“Is there any fear of it smothering?” she asked anxiously.

“Not much odds if it do,” said Mrs. Conover.

Horrified Rilla loosened the blanket around the baby’s face a little. The mite had stopped crying and was blinking up at her. It had big dark eyes in its ugly little face.

“Better not let the wind blow on it,” admon-