 | The fiend's delight |  |
Margaret the Childless.
This, therefore, is the story of her:—Some four
years ago her husband brought home a baby,
which he said he found lying in the street, and
which they concluded to adopt. About a year
after this he brought home another, and the good
woman thought she could stand that one too. A
similar period passed away, when one evening he
opened the door and fell headlong into the room,
swearing with studied correctness at a dog which
had tripped him up, but which upon inspection
turned out to be another baby. Margaret's suspicion
to implore him to adopt that darling also, to which,
after some slight hesitation, he consented. Another
twelvemonth rolled into eternity, when one evening
the lady heard a noise in the back yard, and going
out she saw her husband labouring at the windlass
of the well with unwonted industry. As the
bucket neared the top he reached down and extracted
another infant, exactly like the former ones,
and holding it up, explained to the astonished
matron: “Look at this, now; did you ever see
such a sweet young one go a-campaignin' about
the country without a lantern and a-tumblin' into
wells? There, take the poor little thing in to the
fire, and get off its wet clothes.” It suddenly
flashed across his mind that he had neglected an
obvious precaution—the clothes were not wet—and
he hastily added: “There's no tellin' what would
have become of it, a-climbin' down that rope, if I
hadn't seen it afore it got down to the water.”
Silently the good wife took that infant into the
house and disrobed it; sorrowfully she laid it alongside
its little brothers and sister; long and bitterly
she wept over the quartette; and then with one
tender look at her lord and master, smoking in
solemn silence by the fire, and resembling them
with all his might, she gathered her shawl about
her bowed shoulders and went away into the night.
| The fiend's delight | |