Ma picked up the baby and sat down at the head of the table.
Little Teddy laughed and pinched her face--Ma's face!
Ma looked very grim, but she fed him his supper as skilfully as
if it had not been thirty years since she had done such a thing.
But then, the woman who once learns the mother knack never forgets it.
After tea Ma despatched Pa over to William Alexander's to borrow
a high chair. When Pa returned in the twilight, the baby was fenced
in on the sofa again, and Ma was stepping briskly about the garret.
She was bringing down the little cot bed her own boy had once occupied,
and setting it up in their room for Teddy. Then she undressed
the baby and rocked him to sleep, crooning an old lullaby over him.
Pa Sloane sat quietly and listened, with very sweet memories
of the long ago, when he and Ma had been young and proud,
and the bewhiskered William Alexander had been a curly-headed little
fellow like this one.
Ma was not driven to advertising for Mrs. Garland's brother.
That personage saw the notice of his sister's death in a home
paper and wrote to the Carmody postmaster for full information.
The letter was referred to Ma and Ma answered it.
She wrote that they had taken in the baby, pending further
arrangements, but had no intention of keeping it; and she
calmly demanded of its uncle what was to be done with it.
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