Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/99

 “Who was to dress him I’d like to know,” demanded Mrs. Conover truculently. “I hadn’t time—took me all the time there was looking after Min. ’Sides, as I told yez, I don’t know nothing about kids. Old Mrs. Billy Crawford, she was here when it was born and she washed it and rolled it up in that flannel, and Jen she’s tended it a bit since. The critter is warm enough. This weather would melt a brass monkey.”

Rilla was silent, looking down at the crying baby. She had never encountered any of the tragedies of life before and this one smote her to the core of her heart. The thought of the poor mother going down into the valley of the shadow alone, fretting about her baby, with no one near but this abominable old woman, hurt her terribly. If she had only come a little sooner! Yet what could she have done—what could she do now? She didn’t know, but she must do something. She hated babies—but she simply could not go away and leave that poor little creature with Mrs. Conover—who was applying herself again to her black bottle and would probably be helplessly drunk before anybody came.

“I can’t stay,” thought Rilla. “ Mr. Crawford said I must be home by supper time because he wanted the pony this evening himself. Oh, what can I do?”

She made a sudden, desperate, impulsive resolution.

“I'll take the baby home with me,” she said. “Can I?”

“Sure, if yez wants to,” said Mrs. Conover amiably. “I hain’t any objection. Take it and welcome.”

“I—I can’t carry it,” said Rilla. “I have to drive the horse and I'd be afraid I'd drop it. Is there a—a basket anywhere that I could put it in?”