and I think he looks like a
Jack-o'-lantern. His mother has just died over to North Riverboro, all
alone, excepting for Mrs. Lizy Ann Dennett, and there was another little
weeny baby that died with her, and Emma Jane and I put flowers
around them and did the best we could. The father--that's John
Winslow--quarreled with the mother--that was Sal Perry on the Moderation
Road--and ran away and left her. So he doesn't know his wife and the
weeny baby are dead. And the town has got to bury them because they
can't find the father right off quick, and Jacky has got to go to the
poor farm this afternoon. And it seems an awful shame to take him up to
that lonesome place with those old people that can't amuse him, and
if Emma Jane and Alice Robinson and I take most all the care of him we
thought perhaps you and Uncle Jerry would keep him just for a little
while. You've got a cow and a turn-up bedstead, you know," she hurried
on insinuatingly, "and there's hardly any pleasure as cheap as more
babies where there's ever been any before, for baby carriages and
trundle beds and cradles don't wear out, and there's always clothes
left over from the old baby to begin the new one on. Of course, we can
collect enough things to start Jacky, so he won't be much trouble or
expense; and anyway, he's past the most troublesome age and you won't
have to be up nights with him, and he isn't afraid of anybody or
anything, as you can see by his just sitting there laughing and sucking
his thumb, though he doesn't know what's going to become of him. And
he's just seventeen months old like dear little Sarah Ellen in the
graveyard, and we thought we ought to give you the refusal of him before
he goes to the poor farm, and what do you think about it? Because it's
near my dinner time and Aunt Miranda will keep me in the whole afternoon
if I'm late, and I've got to finish weeding the hollyhock bed before
sundown."

IV

Mrs. Cobb had enjoyed a considerable period of reflection during this
monologue, and Jacky had not used the time unwisely, offering several
unconscious arguments and suggestions to the matter under discussion;
lurching over on the greensward and righting himself with a chuckle,
kicking his bare feet about in delight at the sunshine and groping for
his toes with arms too short to reach them, the movement involving an
entire upsetting of equilibrium followed by more chuckles.

Coming down the last of the stone steps, Sarah Ellen's mother re