ed from the drinker to the seaman and said, "Are
you standing tick for they?"

"I'll pay for their drink and they'll help me along the road with
the baby," said the sailor.

The landlady shrugged her shoulders contemptuously, and asked, "If
I may be so bold, what's her name?"

"What's whose name?"

"The baby's."

"Ha'n't got none," said the seaman.

"What, ain't she been christened yet?"

"No, I reckon not," answered the father. Then he proceeded to
explain. "You see my poor wife she was down in lodgings and
hadn't no friends nor relations no'ther nigh her, and she took
ill and never got over the birth of this here babe, and so it
couldn't be done. But the kid's aunt'll see to all that right
enough when I've got her there."

"What! you're trapsing about the country hugging a babe along
under your arm and slung over your shoulder and feeding her o'
blackberries and chucking her in among fly poison, and not a
Christian yet! My! What a world it is!".

"All in good time, missus."

"That's what Betsy Cole said o' her pork and 'ams when the pig
wor killed and her hadn't salt nor saltpetre. She'd see to it
some day. Meanwhile the maggots came and spiled the lot."

"It shall all be made right in a day or two."

"Ah! but what if it be too late? Then where will you go to some
day? How can you say but that the child wi' being hung topsy-turvy
and swinging like a pendiddlum may die of the apoplexy, or the
blackberries turn sour in her blessed stomach and she go off in
convulsions, or that she may ha' put out the end o' her tongue
and sucked some o' that there fly paper? Then where will you be?"

"I hope I shall be on board ship just before that comes to pass,"
said the sailor.

"Do you know what happens if a child dies and ha'n't been
christened? It becomes a wanderer."

"What do you mean?"

"It ain't a Christian, so it can't go to heaven. It ain't done
no evil, so it can't go to hell; and so the poor spirit wanders
about in the wind and never has no rest. You can hear them piping
in the trees and sobbin' at the winder. I've heard 'm scores of
times. How will you like that when at sea to have your own child
sighing and sobbin' up in the rigging of the vessel, eh?"

"I hope it will not come to that," said the sailor.

"That's what Susan Bay said when she put a darnin' needle into
the armchair cushion, and I sed, said I, 'twas a ticklesome thing
and might do hurt. She did it once too often. Her old man sat