“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.