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“I thinks I was jealous of her,” muttered the old woman; “it comes back to me that I begrudged her making so much of my son, but I knows now that she was a good ‘un, and I speaks of her accordingly. She fretted herself about getting strong enough to carry the child to be christened, while we had the convenience of a parson near at hand, and I wasn’t going to oblige her; but the day after she died, the child was ailing, and thinking it might require the benefit of a burial-service as well as herself, I wrapped it up, and made myself decent, and took my way to the village. I was half-way up the street, when I met a young gentlewoman in a grey dress coming out of a cottage.

“‘Good-day, my pretty lady,’ says I. ‘Could you show an old woman the residence of the clergyman that would do the poor tinkers the kindness of christening a sick child whose mother lies dead in a tilted cart at the meeting of the four roads?’

“‘I’m the clergyman’s wife,’ says she, with the colour in her face, ‘and I’m sure my husband will christen the poor baby. Do let me see it.’

“‘It’s only a tinker’s child,’ says I, ‘a poor brown-faced morsel for a pretty lady’s blue eyes to rest upon, that’s accustomed to the delicate sight of her own golden-haired children; long may they live, and many may you and the gentle clergyman have of them!’

“‘I have no children,’ says she, shortly, with the colour in her face breaking up into red and white patches over her cheeks. ‘Let me carry the baby for you,’ says she, a taking it from me. ‘You must be tired.’

“All the way she kept looking at it, and saying how pretty it was, and what beautiful long eyelashes it had, which went against me at the time, my daughter, for I knowed it was like its mother.

“The clergyman was a pleasing young gentleman of a genteel appearance, with a great deal to say for himself in the way of religion, as was right, it being his business. ‘Name this child,’ says he, and she gives a start that nobody sees but myself. So, thinking that the child being likely to die, there was no loss in obliging the gentlefolk, says I, looking down into the book as if I could read, ‘Any name the lady thinks suitable for the poor tinker’s child;’ and says she, the colour coming up into her face, ‘Call him Christian, for he shall be one.’ So he was named Christian, a name to give no manner of displeasure to myself or to my family; it having been that of my husband’s father, who was unfortunate in a matter of horse-stealing, and died across the water.”

“What did she want with naming the baby, mother?” asked Sybil.

“I comes to that, my daughter, I comes to that, though it’s hard to speak of. I hate myself worse than I hates the police when I thinks of it. But ten pounds–pieces of gold, my daughter, when half-pence were hard to come by–and small expectation that he would outlive his mother by many days–and a feeling against him then, for her sake, though I thinks differently now–“

“You sold him to the clergy-folks?” said Sybil.

“Ten pieces of gold! You never felt the pains of starvation, my daughter–nor perhaps those of jealousy, which are worse. The young clergywoman had no children, on which score she fretted herself; and must have fretted hard, before she begged the poor tinker’s child out of the woods.”

“What did Tinker George say?” asked the girl.

“He used a good deal of bad language, and said I might as easily have got twenty pounds as ten, if I had not been as big a fool as the child’s mother herself. Men are strange creatures, my daughter.”

“So you left Christian with them?”