nithing about kids. Old
Mrs. Billy Crawford, she was here when it was born and she washed it
and rolled it up in that flannel, and Jen she's tended it a bit since.
The critter is warm enough. This weather would melt a brass monkey."

Rilla was silent, looking down at the crying baby. She had never
encountered any of the tragedies of life before and this one smote her
to the core of her heart. The thought of the poor mother going down
into the valley of the shadow alone, fretting about her baby, with no
one near but this abominable old woman, hurt her terribly. If she had
only come a little sooner! Yet what could she have done--what could she
do now? She didn't know, but she must do something. She hated
babies--but she simply could not go away and leave that poor little
creature with Mrs. Conover--who was applying herself again to her black
bottle and would probably be helplessly drunk before anybody came.

"I can't stay," thought Rilla. "Mr. Crawford said I must be home by
supper-time because he wanted the pony this evening himself. Oh, what
can I do?"

She made a sudden, desperate, impulsive resolution.

"I'll take the baby home with me," she said. "Can I?"

"Sure, if yez wants to," said Mrs. Conover amiably. "I hain't any
objection. Take it and welcome."

"I--I can't carry it," said Rilla. "I have to drive the horse and I'd
be afraid I'd drop it. Is there a--a basket anywhere that I could put
it in?"

"Not as I knows on. There ain't much here of anything, I kin tell yez.
Min was pore and as shiftless as Jim. Ef ye opens that drawer over
there yez'll find a few baby clo'es. Best take them along."

Rilla got the clothes--the cheap, sleazy garments the poor mother had
made ready as best she could. But this did not solve the pressing
problem of the baby's transportation. Rilla looked helplessly round.
Oh, for mother--or Susan! Her eyes fell on an enormous blue soup tureen
at the back of the dresser.

"May I have this to--to lay him in?" she asked.

"Well, 'tain't mine but I guess yez kin take it. Don't smash it if yez
can help--Jim might make a fuss about it if he comes back alive--which
he sure will, seein' he ain't any good. He brung that old tureen out
from England with him--said it'd always been in the family. Him and Min
never used it--never had enough soup to put in it--but Jim thought the
world of it. He was mighty perticuler about some things but didn't
worry him none that there weren't much in the way