ed to find the exact size
and quality of cordage wanted by them--and, indeed, even after the
eldest, Sammy, came to the years of discretion, if he had suddenly
required a cable suited to restrain a first-rate iron-clad, his mind
would, in the first blush of the thing, have reverted to mother's
basket! If friends wrote short notes to Mrs Twitter--which they often
did, for the sympathetic find plenty of correspondents--the blank leaves
were always torn off and consigned to a scrap-paper box, and the pile
grew big enough at last to have set up a small stationer in business.
And so with everything that came under her influence at home or abroad.
She emphatically did what she could to prevent waste, and became a
living fulfilment of the well-known proverb, for as she wasted not she
wanted not.

But to return from this digression--

"Well, then," said Mrs Twitter, "don't go and find fault, Samuel," (she
used the name in full when anxious to be impressive), "with what
Providence has given us, by putting the word `only' to it, for we are
_rich_ with five hundred a year."

Mr Twitter freely admitted that he was wrong, and said he would be more
careful in future of the use to which he put the word "only."

"But," said he, "we haven't a hole or corner in the house to put the
poor thing in. To be sure, there's the coal-cellar and the scuttle
might be rigged up as a cradle, but--"

He paused, and looked at his wife. The deceiver did not mean all this
to be taken as a real objection. He was himself anxious to retain the
infant, and only made this show of opposition to enlist Maria more
certainly on his side.

"Not a corner!" she exclaimed, "why, is there not the whole parlour? Do
you suppose that a baby requires a four-post bed, and a wash-hand-stand,
and a five-foot mirror? Couldn't we lift the poor darling in and out in
half a minute? Besides, there is our own room. I feel as if there was
an uncomfortable want of some sort ever since _our_ baby was
transplanted to the nursery. So we will establish the old bassinet and
put the mite there."

"And what shall we call it, Maria?"

"Call it--why, call it--call it--Mite--no name could be more
appropriate."

"But, my love, Mite, if a name at all, is a man's--that is, it sounds
like a masculine name."

"Call it Mita, then."

And so it was named, and thus that poor little waif came to be adopted
by that "rich" family.

It seems to be our mission, at this time, to in