“I’ll make Willie’s trousers, Mrs. Addcock, this afternoon, if he’ll come and help me feed and bed everything at Elmnest,” I offered, with my mouth full of pins.

“No, child, but thank you for your willing heart.  Mrs. Spain told me how you made Ezra’s pants so one leg of him came while the other went, and I guess a mother is the only one to get the legs of her own offspring to match.  I’ll work it out myself now that Miss Mamie is attended to.”

“But now I know how to trouser boys normally.  I turned Joe Tillett out in perfect proportion as well as in strong jeans,” I answered, without the least offense at finding my first efforts as a tailor thus becoming the subject of kindly village gossip.

“Well, I hope this junket will turn out as Mary Beesley expects, with enjoyment for everybody.  However, I’m going to risk my back with Mr. Silas’ mules rather than with that Bessie Rutherford’s wheels that are not critter-drawn.  I only hope she don’t spill all my children, that I’ve had such a time getting here on earth, back into Kingdom Come.”

“Would you rather go in my carriage with Mrs. Tillett, and let me go with Bess to hold in the children?” I asked with unconcealed eagerness.

“No, I don’t believe so,” answered Mrs. Addcock, cannily.  “Sallie Tillett is having her dress made buttoned up in the back, and she has been in the habit of feeding the baby whenever he cries for it, though he can ’most stand alone.  She is going to depend on you and a bag of biscuit to manage him through the show, and I’d rather not take your place.”

“No; perhaps you would enjoy it more behind Uncle Silas and the mules,” I answered cheerily, feeling perfectly capable of handling Baby Tillett and his bag of biscuits, because the memory of the times his little head with its tow fuzz had cuddled down on my linen smock, when I had carried him back and forth for long visits in the barn to the Peckerwood Pup so his mother could have a little vacation from his society, accelerated the movement of the chant on the cardiac instrument in my breast.  “He stays hours and hours with me in a basket in the barn and is perfectly satisfied with the biscuits.”

“All the same I told Sallie I could make that dress by another pattern, and you’d better sit with him a good distance during the show,” said Mrs. Addcock, as I finished shoe-topping Mamie and picked up my pink-lined white sunbonnet, which had been a present from Mrs. Addcock herself and was astonishingly frilly and coquettish emanating from such a source, and began to depart.

“I’ll take him on the other side of the auditorium,” I answered, with respect for advice that I knew must be good through experience.

And thus that pink and white, cooing, obstreperously hungry baby was made an instrument of cruel fate and—­

“Come over and see the little cap I’ve made Bennie so as to do you honor,” called rosy Mrs. Tillett as I went down the street towards the grocery.