He wiped his forehead where the perspiration stood in drops, and watched with amazement the sudden lull in the tempest.

Clasped in her mother’s arms, the baby smiled and gurgled, and Dick, drying his eyes on the maternal bosom, showed the exact spot where she must kiss his bruised head.

“Ned, what have you done?  This baby’s hair is dripping wet, and so is the neck of her dress.”

“Serves her right, too.  I sprinkled her, that’s all.”

“Sprinkled her!  Have you lost your senses?”

“Shouldn’t wonder if I had; people in bedlam are apt to be crazy.  Yes, I sprinkled Missy, because she turned so black in the face, I thought she was strangling; and my step-mother always sprinkled me when I had a fit of tantrums.  But let me tell you, Missy will never be a zealous Baptist, she doesn’t take to water kindly.”

“When I want my children step-mothered I will let you know.  Give me that towel, and baby’s woollen cap hanging on the knob of the bureau.  Bless her precious heart! if she does not keep you up all night, with the croup, you may thank your stars.”

“Susie, just tell me how you tame them, so that next time—­”

“Next time, sir, I shall not trust you.  I just love them, and they know it; that is what tames the whole world.”

Edward Singleton stooped over his wife, and kissed her rosy cheek.

“Little woman, what luck had you in No. 19?”

“The best I could wish.  I have saved that poor girl from brain-fever, I hope.”

“How did you manage it?”

“Just simply because I am a flesh and blood woman, and not a blundering, cast-iron man.”

“How does she seem now?”

“She has had a good, hearty spell of wholesome crying; no hysterics, mind you, but floods of tears; and now she is sound asleep with her head on the altar railing, in the chapel.  I locked her up there, and here is the key.  When she wakes, I want her brought up here, put in that room yonder, and left entirely to me, until her trial is over.  I never do things half way, Ned, and you need not pucker your eyebrows, for I will be responsible for her.  I have put my hand to the plough, and you are not to meddle with the lines, till I finish my furrow.”

CHAPTER VIII.

In one of the “outhouses” which constituted the servants’ quarters, in that which common parlance denominated the “back-yard” at “Elm Bluff,” an old negro woman sat smoking a pipe.

The room which she had occupied for more than forty years, presented a singular melange of incongruous odds and ends, the flotsam of a long term of service, where the rewards, if intrinsically incommensurate, were none the less invaluable, to the proud recipient.  The floor was covered by a faded carpet, once the pride of the great drawing-room, but the velvet pile had disappeared beneath the arched insteps and high heels of lovely belles and haughty beaux, and the scarlet feathers and peacock plumes that originally glowed on the brilliant buff ground, were no longer distinguishable.