Chapter XVIII How They Bought a Baby
Spend your money
Speed you, honey,
Quick as you can fly
Up the street,
Toys and sweet
Money burns to buy.
And all this time they had saved their birthday money!
It was accidental, for they had in the multitude of other events and presents, forgotten they had it until one morning, in emptying their banks for “peanut” nickles, with a dexterity born of long practice, they discovered the two gold coins, for they each had been given one, of course, and they rushed off at once to show them.
“Haven’t we saved this money, though?” they said, full of pride, and then they straightway sat down to make plans for spending it.
“Let’s each buy a puppy for a parting gift to Bobby and Nan,” suggested Ethelwyn, as she and Beth were soon going away to visit the Home.
“Yes, sir, let’s,” said Beth. “They dearly love Bose, and Mr. Smithers, our vegetable man, has six and will sell us two, I know.”
Mr. Smithers said he would be charmed—or words to that effect—to sell them two Newfoundland puppies at five dollars each, and they struck a bargain at once.
It was easier to do because mother had gone to town on business and was to be away all day.
Mr. Smithers promised to bring them in that afternoon, and they went off to wait until then with what patience they could muster.
They met Joe on their way to the barn, and noticed that his usual ruddy countenance was grave and pale.
“My sister is sick,” he explained, “and she’s getting no better.”
“Why don’t you tell mother?” asked Ethelwyn.
“O it’s everything your mother’s done for us this summer, without bothering her more,” he said. “I’m going to try to get my sister up in the country, but—I can’t yet awhile.”
“Will it cost very much, Joe?”
“No, not much, but there’s so many of us to feed and clothe that we never have any money left for anything else.”
“Mother will help, I know,” said Ethelwyn, and they went up to the house, pondering deeply.
“Those horrid puppies! I wish we’d never heard of them,” said Ethelwyn. “Then we could give Dick the money. What did you think about them for?”
“You did yourself.”
“No, I didn’t. Anyway, let’s watch for Mr. Smithers at the back garden gate, and tell him not to bring them.”
So they went down through the garden, and, looking over the gate, they saw a very sulky little colored girl carrying a long limp bundle of yellow calico, with a round woolly head protruding at the top.
“O that cunning baby I Where’d you get him?” they cried both at once, opening the gate to look at him.
The sulky nurse shifted the bundle to her other shoulder.
“Allus had him, mos’,” she said; “him or ‘nuther one, perzactly like him, to lug roun’ while ma’s washin’.”
“Don’t you like to play with him?” asked Ethelwyn in a shocked tone.
“No, I don’t,” was the emphatic reply; “nor you wouldn’t needa, ef you had it to do contin’ul.”
“Why, you can play he’s a doll.”
“He’s showin’ off now, but when he gits to bawlin’, you ain’t a gwine to make no mistake ’bout his bein’ nuffin’ ’tal but a cry-baby,” she continued, preparing to move on.
“Would you sell him?” asked Beth eagerly.
“Yessum, I sholy would,” said his sister with a gleam of interest; “we ain’t a gwine to miss him, wid six mo’! I’ll sell him easy fo’ a dolla’.”
There was a hurried consultation between Beth and Ethelwyn.
“It’s cheaper, and would leave nine dollars for Joe. Bobby could keep him one day, and Nan the next, or we could get something else for one of them. I think Nan would like him the best.”
“We will buy him,” said Ethelwyn, at the end of the consultation.
There was a moment of hesitation, and then the yellow bundle went into Ethelwyn’s outstretched arms.
Beth went off to get the money. She ran breathlessly down the street to get the change, she was so afraid the girl would change her mind and take back the baby.
There was no doubt but that the girl was in rather a dubious state of mind over it, but the silver dollar clinched her resolution, and she walked firmly off, without a backward glance in the direction of the gurgling Samuel Saul, which was the alliteral name of the yellow bundle.
Ethelwyn and Beth, after a further consultation, took him to the attic. They considered it providential that Sierra Nevada was assisting in the laundry, and that the coast was therefore free from all observers.
Samuel Saul was rocked in the cradle in which the ancestors of the children, as well as themselves, had been rocked, and he, well contented with the motion and not ill pleased with his surroundings, presently fell into a delicious slumber.
“‘Rockabye baby on the tree top,’” came from the open attic window, and floated down to Joe currying Ninkum, and to ‘Vada, Mandy, and Aunt Sophie in the laundry.
Joe smiled at the cheerful refrain, and ‘Vada, sure that they were in no mischief, mopped her dripping brow, and went on with her work.
Watching Samuel Saul’s peaceful slumbers grew a little monotonous after a while, so Beth descended to the kitchen for a plate of cookies and a glass of water, and leaving this substantial luncheon beside their sleeping charge, they went down-stairs and for a while played on the piano with more strength than anything else. After that they took more cookies and went over to play with Bobby.
Bobby, making a chicken yard out of wire netting, was delighted to have assistance, and they telephoned for Nan, who speedily joined them.
“Mother’s gone to town to-day to see your grandfather, who owns a bank, Bobby,” said Ethelwyn.
“I expect it’s on account of his losing a whole lot of money,” rejoined Bobby, standing on tiptoe on a box to pound in a nail.
“Where did he lose it? Were there holes in his pockets?” asked Beth, unrolling the wire at Bobby’s order.
“On change,” said Bobby, with his mouth full of nails.
“Our money is in your grandfather’s bank, and the Home money and Grandmother Van Stark’s. I hope he hasn’t lost anybody’s but his own,” said Ethelwyn anxiously.
“You’re not very polite,” said Nan.
“Well I do, but if he lost only change, prob’ly it’s his own, and mother’s gone to give him some more.”
“Pooh!” said Bobby, “it’s not—”
But before he could say anything more, excited voices were heard, and four black and shining faces appeared over the top of the fence, while a guilty eye looked through a knot-hole farther down.
“Has you all seen anything of a low down black pickaninny which is los’?” This remark came from ‘Vada.
“Which is stole,” corrected a mountain of flesh, quivering with wrath.
“Is it Samuel Saul?” asked Ethelwyn.
“It is so; will you projus him?” asked the mountain.
“He’s in the attic asleep; his sister sold him to us for a present to Bobby and Nan—”
“O let’s see him,” cried Nan, with lively interest.
“You all is gwine to leab him alone—” began the mountain, when Mandy turned ponderously in her direction.
“Will you, Martha Jane Jenkins, please kindly rec’lect dat you is ’sociatin’ wid quality now, an’ take a good care how you talk, though sholy it may be de fus time dat you has ebber been in good sassity—”
“Dat is sholy de trufe w’en I has been wid you,” said Martha Jane Jenkins, wrathfully.
But now from the open attic windows were heard such piercing shrieks that they all with one consent turned in that direction.
“Americky, you go bring me you brudda,” instructed Martha, cuffing soundly the girl with the guilty eye.
Presently America and the children returned with the wailing Samuel Saul to the place where Mandy, ‘Vada, and Aunt Sophie were standing, loftily ignoring the angry mother and making caustic remarks calculated to add to her discomfort.
In the capacious arms of his mother, Samuel Saul ceased his repining and contentedly gurgled again. As the united ones went off, Martha Jane Jenkins with her head in the air and America remorsefully weeping in the rear, Ethelwyn said, “Well, our dollar’s gone, and our baby too, and I thought we had made such a bargain. I don’t know what Mr. Smithers will say.”
“And poor Joe too,” said Beth.
“There comes Mr. Smithers now,” exclaimed Bobby.
“Yes an’ I ain’t got your puppies either, for when I got home I found my boy had sold two and given away two, so there wasn’t any left but what we wanted to keep.”
“Well, I’m thankful,” said Ethelwyn; “for we bought a baby instead, only its mother took it back, and we just had to use the rest of the money for something else. Thank you, Mr. Smithers.”
“You’re entirely welcome,” responded he.