yn.
"Then we could give Dick the money. What did you think about them for?"

"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,