She used to lay
the nursery meals when none of the little girls could be found to
help her, and bundle on the clothes of the two youngest in the
morning, but beyond that the seven had to manage for themselves.
The mother? you ask.
Oh, she was only twenty---just a lovely, laughing-faced girl, whom
they all adored, and who was very little steadier and very
little more of a housekeeper than Meg. Only the youngest of the
brood was hers, but she seemed just as fond of the other six as
of it, and treated it more as if it were a very entertaining
kitten than a real live baby, and her very own.
Indeed at Misrule--that is the name their house always went by,
though I believe there was a different one painted above the
balcony--that baby seemed a gigantic joke to everyone. The
Captain generally laughed when he saw it, tossed it in the air,
and then asked someone to take it quickly.
The children dragged it all: over the country with them, dropped
it countless times, forgot its pelisse on wet days, muffled it up
when it was hot, gave it the most astounding things to eat, and yet
it was the if healthiest; prettiest, and most sunshiny baby that
ever sucked a wee fat thumb.
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