d indicate that she ought to go and be
occupied with it.

I would often say to her: "Why can't you let Pomona attend to it? You
surely need not give up your whole time and your whole mind to the
child."

But she would always answer that Pomona had a great many things to do,
and that she couldn't, at all times, attend to the baby. Suppose, for
instance, that she should be at the barn.

I once suggested that a nurse should be procured, but at this she
laughed.

"There is very little to do," she said, "and I really like to do it."

"Yes," said I, "but you spend so much of your time in thinking how glad
you will be to do that little, when it is to be done, that you can't
give me any attention, at all."

"Now you have no cause to say that," she exclaimed. "You know very
well--, there!" and away she ran. It had just begun to cry!

Naturally, I was getting tired of this. I could never begin a sentence
and feel sure that I would be allowed to finish it. Nothing was
important enough to delay attention to an infantile whimper.

Jonas, too, was in a state of unrest. He was obliged to wear his good
clothes, a great part of the time, for he was continually going on
errands to the village, and these errands were so important that they
took precedence of everything else. It gave me a melancholy sort of
pleasure, sometimes, to do Jonas's work when he was thus sent away.

I asked him, one day, how he liked it all?

"Well," said he, reflectively, "I can't say as I understand it, exactly.
It does seem queer to me that such a little thing should take up pretty
nigh all the time of three people. I suppose, after a while," this he
said with a grave smile, "that you may be wanting to turn in and help."
I did not make any answer to this, for Jonas was, at that moment,
summoned to the house, but it gave me an idea. In fact, it gave me two
ideas.

The first was that Jonas's remark was not entirely respectful. He was my
hired man, but he was a very respectable man, and an American man, and
therefore might sometimes be expected to say things which a foreigner,
not known to be respectable, would not think of saying, if he wished
to keep his place. The fact that Jonas had always been very careful to
treat me with much civility, caused this remark to make more impression
on me. I felt that he had, in a measure, reason for it.

The other idea was one which grew and developed in my mind until I
afterward formed a plan upon it. I determin