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This was an unpleasant and curious exclamation, and put Mother Grutchen in a terrible flurry. She owned that she thought the young Baron looked rather queer, but remarked that babies varied considerably from time to time; and, moreover, that as she had scarcely had him out of her sight since the day he was born, he could not by any possibility be anything else than the young Baron. Still the Baroness held to her opinion, and even some of these might occasionally be troublesome. She determined faithfully to do her duty by the child nevertheless, and to make no more complaints to her mistress. The latter was not slow, however, to find out that something was amiss with the infant. The very next morning, when it was brought to her, she looked at it with a strange and startled expression, and declared that it was not her child.
Upon this the Baron was appealed to at once. He, poor man, was terribly annoyed at being asked the question. Proud as he had been from the first of his infant son, he was one of those who held the theory that all babies are, up to a certain age, very much alike, and was positively quite incapable of pronouncing upon the identity of his own child. He put on his large gold-rimmed spectacles, stared vacantly down upon the infant, and said several things which had nothing whatever to do with the question.
This put the Baroness in a passion, which by no means mended matters at all, and there seemed every probability of a general row. But Martha Scweinvolt, who had been hovering about the door, waiting to be summoned, now found an excuse for entering the room, and so strongly expressed her decided belief and conviction that the child was the right child, and none other, that the good nurse felt her own opinion coming more strongly to the same conclusion. The Baron, for very peace and quietness, agreed with the two servants; and the Baroness, finding them all against her, had a regular good scold all round, and said no more about it.
Thus it came to pass, Brother Thames, that the child Hubert was carried off by the water-demon, and a wretched little changeling put in his place and accepted as the young heir. It was not long before his evil propensities began to develop themselves. He could scarcely walk alone before he was in mischief, and, indeed, long before this time he knocked over his mother’s morning cup of tea whenever he could manage to do so in his early visits to her bed, and scratched the Baron’s face, as he lay asleep, with a tiny fist which seemed hardly capable of hurting so much as it did.
He grew fast for a short time, and then remained as if he would never grow any bigger. But his appetite was more like that of a full-grown man, nor was he particular where or what he ate. At breakfast he would finish off a huge bowl of porridge, and make his old nurse tilt over the bowl so that he might lick off the last drop from the edge. He would clutch at everything on the dining-room table if brought in during meals, and roar and cry loudly if the things he wanted were not immediately given to him.
As he grew older, his conduct by no means improved. Not only was he abominably rude to his supposed father and mother, but he took every opportunity of endeavouring to make them fall out. He would, with an utter disregard of truth, but with a wonderful air of innocence, tell the Baroness how he had heard the Baron say she had a bad temper, and was a disagreeable woman; whilst he would tell the Baron, as an affair of everyday occurrence, that his wife spoke of him as a lazy sot, who was no companion whatever to her, and spent his life in eating, drinking, and smoking.
These little things were scarcely calculated to improve the happiness of the worthy couple, but this was by no means the only channel through which the little wretch poured discomfort upon the household. He set everybody by the ears whenever he could, and showed an utter heartlessness of character, coupled with a reckless depravity of disposition, which was perfectly horrible. He roared with laughter on being told of any misfortune having happened to another person, and scowled sulkily when any one fell in with a piece of good luck. Crushing flies on the windows was one of his earliest amusements, and when this had become monotonous, he used to torture any animal he could get hold of with a cruelty beyond belief.