So the baby and Aunt ’Viny went out.

It was a new thing and a hard thing for Lovina Perkins to have a baby on her hands; she would rather have charged herself with the care of a farm, or the building of a house; she could work, she could order, plan, regulate, and execute; but what to do with a baby?  There it lay, helpless, soft, incapable, not to be scolded, or worked, or made responsible in any way, the most impracticable creature possible:  a kitten she could have put into a basket at night, and set in the shed; a puppy she could and would have drowned; but a baby, an unlucky, red, screeching creature, with a soul, was worse than all other evils.  However, she couldn’t let it die; so she went after some milk, and, with Aunt Rhody’s help, after much patient disgust, taught the child how to live, and it lived.

Mary Scranton was buried next to Tom, and the June grass grew over both their graves, and people thought no more about it; only every now and then Doctor Parker came to Miss Perkins’s house to ask after “baby,” who grew daily fat and fair and smiling; and on one of these occasions he met the minister, Parson Goodyear, who had come, as Miss ’Viny expressed it, “o’ purpose to take me to do, because I ha’n’t presented the child for baptism.”

“Fact is,” continued she, “I ha’n’t an idea what to call her.  I don’t favor callin’ of her Mary, because that was her mother’s name, and I couldn’t think of two on ’em at once; and Scripter names are generally rather ha’sh.  Miss Parker, Doctor, kind of favored her bein’ called Aribelly, because there was one of that name rather come over in the Mayflower; but I think it’s too mighty for a child that’s got to work;—­what do you say?”

“I think you’re right, Miss ’Viny,” said the Doctor, as gravely as he could.

“I don’t believe in fine names myself.  I should think you might do worse than to call the baby Content;—­that was your own mother’s name, wasn’t it? and it was the last word Mary spoke.”

“Well, now, that’s quite an idea, Doctor!  I guess I will.”

“And you will present her on the first Sabbath in May?” said Parson Goodyear.

“Well, yes, if I’m spared,” said Aunt ’Viny; and, being spared, on that sweet May-Sunday she carried the smiling little child up the aisle of the meeting-house, and had it baptized Content.

Strange to say,—­yet not all strange,—­before it was a year old, the baby had found its way quite down into the middle of Aunt ’Viny’s heart.  To be sure, it was a deal of trouble; it would ache and cry in a reasonless way, when nobody could tell what ailed it; it would take a great amount of caring-for with ungrateful silence and utter want of demonstration for a long time;—­but then it was so helpless! —­irresistible plea to a woman!—­and under all Miss ’Viny’s rough exterior, her heart was as sweet as the kernel of a butternut, though about as hard to discover.  True, she was