“Well, I never!” said Biddy, bursting into Ruth’s room in her usual thunder-clap way, and seating herself on the edge of a chair, as she polished her face with the skirt of her dress. “As sure as my name is Biddy, I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Well, I’ve been expecting it. Folks that have ears can’t help hearing when folks quarrel.”

“What are you talking about?” said Ruth. “Who has quarreled? It is nothing that concerns me.”

“Don’t it though?” replied Biddy. “I’m thinking it will concern ye to pack up bag and baggage, and be off out of the house; for that’s what we are all coming to, and all for Mrs. Skiddy. You see it’s just here, ma’am. Masther has been threatnin’ for a long time to go to Californy, where the gould is as plenty as blackberries. Well, misthress tould him, if ever he said the like o’ that again, he’d rue it; and you know, ma’am, it’s she that has a temper. Well, yesterday I heard high words again; and, sure enough, after dinner to-day, she went off, taking Sammy and Johnny, and laving the bit nursing baby on his hands, and the boarders and all. And it’s Biddy McFlanigan who’ll be off, ma’am, and not be made a pack-horse of, to tend that teething child, and be here, and there, and everywhere in a minute. And so I come to bid you good-bye.”

“But, Biddy—”

“Don’t be afther keeping me, ma’am; Pat has shouldhered me trunk, and ye see I can’t be staying when things is as they is.”

The incessant cries of Mrs. Skiddy’s bereaved baby soon bore ample testimony to the truth of Biddy’s narration, appealing to Ruth’s motherly sympathies so vehemently, that she left her room and went down to offer her assistance.

There sat Mr. John Skiddy, the forlorn widower, the ambitious Californian, in the middle of the kitchen, in his absconded wife’s rocking-chair, trotting a seven months’ baby on the sharp apex of his knee, alternately singing, whistling, and wiping the perspiration from his forehead, while the little Skiddy threw up its arms in the most frantic way, and held its breath with rage, at the awkward attempts of its dry nurse to restore peace to the family.

“Let me sweeten a little cream and water and feed that child for you, Mr. Skiddy,” said Ruth. “I think he is hungry.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Hall,” said Skiddy, with a man’s determined aversion to owning ‘checkmated.’ “I am getting along famously with the little darling. Papa will feed him, so he will,” said Skiddy; and, turning the maddened baby flat on his back, he poured down a whole tea-spoonful of the liquid at once; the natural consequence of which was a milky jet d’eau on his face, neckcloth, and vest, from the irritated baby, who resented the insult with all his mother’s spirit.

Ruth adroitly looked out the window, while Mr. Skiddy wiped his face and sopped his neckcloth, after which she busied herself in picking up the ladles, spoons, forks, dredging-boxes, mortars, pestles, and other culinary implements, with which the floor was strewn, in the vain attempt to propitiate the distracted infant.

“I think I will spare the little dear to you a few minutes,” said Skiddy, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, “while I run over to the bakery to get a loaf for tea. Mrs. Skiddy has probably been unexpectedly detained, and Biddy is so afraid of her labor in her absence, that she has taken French leave. I shall be back soon,” said Skiddy, turning away in disgust from the looking-glass, as he caught sight of his limpsey dicky and collapsed shirt-bosom.

Ruth took the poor worried baby tenderly, laid it on its stomach across her lap, then loosening its frock strings, began rubbing its little fat shoulders with her velvet palm. There was a maternal magnetism in that touch; baby knew it! he stopped crying and winked his swollen eyelids with the most luxurious satisfaction, as much as to say, there, now, that’s something like!

Gently Ruth drew first one, then the other, of the magnetized baby’s chubby arms from its frock sleeves, substituting a comfortable loose night-dress for the tight and heated frock; then she carefully drew off its shoe, admiring the while the beauty of the little blue veined, dimpled foot, while Katy, hush as any mouse, looked on delightedly from her little cricket on the hearth, and Nettie, less philosophical, was more than half inclined to cry at what she considered an infringement of her rights.

Mr. Skiddy’s reflections as he walked to the bakery were of a motley character. Upon the whole, he inclined to the opinion that it was “not good for man to be alone,” especially with a nursing baby. The premeditated and unmixed malice of Mrs. Skiddy in leaving the baby, instead of Sammy or Johnny, was beyond question. Still, he could not believe that her desire for revenge would outweigh all her maternal feelings. She would return by-and-bye; but where could she have gone? People cannot travel with an empty purse; but, perhaps even now, at some tantalizing point of contiguity, she was laughing at the success of her nefarious scheme; and Mr. Skiddy’s face reddened at the thought, and his arms instinctively took an a-kimbo attitude.

But then, perhaps, she never meant to come back. What was he to do with that baby? A wet-nurse would cost him six dollars a week; and, as to bringing up little Tommy by hand, city milk would soon finish him. And, to do Mr. Skiddy justice, though no Socrates, he was a good father to his children.

And now it was nearly dark. Was he doomed to sit up all night, tired as he was, with Tommy in one hand, and a spoon and pewter porringer in the other? Or, worse still, walk the floor in white array, till his joints, candle, and patience gave out? Then, there were the boarders to be seen to! He never realized before how many irons Mrs. Skiddy had daily in the fire. There was Mr. Thompson, and Mr. Johnson, on the first floor, (and his face grew hot as he thought of it,) had seen him in the kitchen looking so Miss-Nancy-like, as he superintended pots, kettles, and stews. Stews? there was not a dry thread on him that minute, although a cold north wind was blowing. Never mind, he was not such a fool as to tell of his little troubles; so he entered the bakery and bought an extra pie, and a loaf of plum-cake, for tea, to hoodwink the boarders into the belief that Mrs. Skiddy’s presence was not at all necessary to a well-provided table.

Tea went off quite swimmingly, with Mr. John Skiddy at the urn. The baby, thanks to Ruth’s maternal management, lay sweetly sleeping in his little wicker cradle, dreaming of a distant land flowing with milk and honey, and looking as if he was destined to a protracted nap; although it was very perceptible that Mr. Skiddy looked anxious when a door was shut hard, or a knife or fork dropped on the table; and he had several times been seen to close his teeth tightly over his lip, when a heavy cart rumbled mercilessly past.

Tea being over, the boarders dispersed their various ways; Ruth notifying Mr. Skiddy of her willingness to take the child whenever it became unmanageable. Then Mr. Skiddy, very gingerly, and with a cat-like tread, put away the tea-things, muttering an imprecation at the lid of the tea-pot, as he went, for falling off. Then, drawing the evening paper from his pocket, and unfurling it, (with one eye on the cradle,) he put up his weary legs and commenced reading the news.

Hark! a muffled noise from the cradle! Mr. Skiddy started, and applied his toe vigorously to the rocker—it was no use. He whistled—it didn’t suit. He sang—it was a decided failure. Little Skiddy had caught sight of the pretty bright candle, and it was his present intention to scream till he was taken up to investigate it.

Miserable Skiddy! He recollected, now, alas! too late, that Mrs. Skiddy always carefully screened the light from Tommy’s eyes while sleeping. He began to be conscious of a growing respect for Mrs. Skiddy, and a growing aversion to her baby. Yes; in that moment of vexation, with that unread evening paper before him, he actually called it her baby.

How the victimized man worried through the long evening and night—how he tried to propitiate the little tempest with the castor, the salt-cellar, its mother’s work-box, and last, but not least, a silver cup he had received for his valor from the Atlantic Fire Company—how the baby, all-of-a-twist, like Dickens’ young hero kept asking for “more”—how he laid it on its back, and laid it on its side, and laid it on its stomach, and propped it up on one end in a house made of pillows, and placed the candle at the foot of the bed, in the vain hope that that luminary might be graciously deemed by the infant tyrant a substitute for his individual exertions—and how, regardless of all these philanthropic efforts, little Skiddy stretched out his arms imploringly, and rooted suggestively at his father’s breast, in a way to move a heart of stone—and how Mr. Skiddy said several words not to be found in the catechism—and how the daylight found him as pale as a potato sprout in a cellar, with all sorts of diagonal lines tattoed over his face by enraged little finger nails—and how the little horn, that for years had curled up so gracefully toward his nose, was missing from the corner of his moustache—are they not all written in the ambitious Californian’s repentant memory?