Page:Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots.djvu/18

 wonderfully;then it had a little rash; and then a nasty hooping cough; and then a fever, and a continual pains in its poor little stomach, crying, poor dear child, from morning till night.

But dear Tom is an excellent nurse; and many and many a night has he had no sleep, dear man! in consequence of the poor little baby. He walks up and down with it for hours, singing a kind of song (dear fellow, he has no more voice than a tea-kettle), and bobbing his head backwards and forwards, and looking, in his night-cap and dressing-gown, so droll. Oh, Eliza! how you would laugh to see him.

We have one of the best nursemaids in the world,—an Irish woman, who is as fond of baby almost as his mother (but that can never be). She takes it to walk in the Park for hours together, and I really don't know why Thomas dislikes her. He says she is tipsy very often, and slovenly, which I cannot conceive;—to be sure, the nurse is sadly dirty, and sometimes smells very strong of gin.

But what of that? these little drawbacks only make