, dismal house, without chick or child in it
for years and years;--full of rooms and furniture and black people, and
nowhere the shout and cry of a baby. There was nobody to be anxious
about,--nobody gone away or coming home, or to be wept for, or to be
joyful for;--only their two stupid selves. Madam pottering about the
great house, dusting with a feather duster all the knick-knacks that she
had brought home from Europe, and that she might have just as well
bought in New York after she got home; and he putting up books and
taking them down, riding out on his white horse, and having somebody to
dine once in a while,--_could_ any life be drearier and more tiresome?

Why people who have great empty houses and hearts don't rush into the
street and pick up the first dozen little vagabonds they see, I can't
think. With soap-suds, love, and the tenderest care, why don't they
baptize them, body and soul, and keep them to make music in their silent
halls, and, when their time comes, have something worth to render up to
the child-loving Christ? Especially, why didn't two such affectionate,
tender-hearted persons as Colonel Lunt and his wife? But they did not.
They only waxed duller and duller, sitting there by their Christmas
fires, that warmed no hearts but their own, rapidly growing cold.

They sat alone by their Christmas fire one night, at last, to some
purpose. All the servants had gone off pleasuring somewhere, where it is
to be hoped there were children enough. The Colonel went himself to the
door and brought in a market-basket that stood in the porch. He opened
it by the light of a blazing fire, and Mrs. Lunt guessed, at every
wrapper he turned down, something, and then something else; but she
never guessed a baby. Yet there it lay, with eyes wide open,--a perfect
baby, nobly planned;--a year old or more; and no more afraid of the
Colonel than if it had been in society ten years. The little girl sprang
forward towards him, laughing, and by doing so won his heart at once.
Mrs. Lunt found credentials in the basket, in the shape of a note
written in good English and spelled correctly. The wardrobe of the baby
accompanied her also,--fine and delicately embroidered. The note said
that circumstances of the most painful nature made it imperative to the
mother of this child to keep herself unknown for a time; but meanwhile
begged the charitable care of Colonel Lunt.

The child, of course, took straight hold of their heart-strin