Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/98

 no intention of touching the baby—she had no “knack with kids” either. She saw an ugly midget with a red, distorted little face, rolled up in a piece of dingy old flannel. She had never seen an uglier baby. Yet a feeling of pity for the desolate, orphaned mite which had “come out of the everywhere” into such a dubious “here”, took sudden possession of her.

“What is going to become of the baby?” she asked.

“Lord knows,” said Mrs. Conover candidly. “Min worried awful over that before she died. She kept on a-saying ‘Oh, what will become of my pore baby’ till it really got on my nerves. I ain’t a-going to trouble myself with it, I can tell yez. I brung up a boy that my sister left and he skinned out as soon as he got to be some good and won't give me a mite o’ help in my old age, ungrateful whelp as he is. I told Min it’d have to be sent to an orphan asylum till we’d see if Jim ever came back to look after it. Would yez believe it, she didn’t relish the idee. But that’s the long and short of it.”

“But who will look after it until it can be taken to the asylum?” persisted Rilla. Somehow the baby’s fate worried her.

“’S’pose I’ll have to,” grunted Mrs. Conover. She put away her pipe and took an unblushing swig from a black bottle she produced from a shelf near her. “It’s my opinion the kid won't live long. It’s sickly. Min never had no gimp and I guess it hain’t either. Likely it won't trouble any one long and good riddance, sez I.”

Rilla drew the blanket down a little further.

“Why, the baby isn’t dressed!” she exclaimed, in a shocked tone.