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The Hired Baby
by
“Mother Mawks has got it this time,” he said, with a grin which was more like a snarl. “Joe’s blood was up, and he pounded her nigh into a jelly. She’ll leave ye quiet now; so long as ye pay the hire reg’lar ye’ll have Joe on yer side. If so be as there’s a bad day, ye’d better not come home at all.”
“I know,” said Liz; “but she’s always had the money for the child, and surely it wasn’t much to ask her to let me keep it warm on such a cold night as this.”
Jim Duds looked meditative. “Wot makes yer care for that babby so much?” he asked. “‘T ain’t yourn.”
Liz sighed.
“No,” she said, sadly. “That’s true. But it seems something to hold on to, like. See what my life has been!” She stopped, and a wave of colour flushed her pallid features. “From a little girl, nothing but the streets–the long, cruel streets! and I just a bit of dirt on the pavement–no more; flung here, flung there, and at last swept into the gutter. All dark–all useless!” She laughed a little. “Fancy, Jim! I’ve never seen the country!”
“Nor I,” said Jim, biting a piece of straw reflectively. “It must be powerful fine, with naught but green trees an’ posies a-blowin’ an’ a growin’ everywheres. There ain’t many kitching areas there, though, I’m told.”
Liz went on, scarcely heeding him: “The baby seems to me like what the country must be–all harmless and sweet and quiet; when I hold it so, my heart gets peaceful somehow–I don’t know why.”
Again Jim looked speculative. He waved his bitten straw expressively.
“Ye’ve had ‘sperience, Liz. Hain’t ye met no man like wot ye could care fur?”
Liz trembled, and her eyes grew wild..
“Men!” she cried, with bitterest scorn–“no men have come my way, only brutes!”
Jim stared, but was silent; he had no fit answer ready. Presently Liz spoke again, more softly:
“Jim, do you know I went into a great church to-day?”
“Worse luck!” said Jim, sententiously. “Church ain’t no use nohow as far as I can see.”
“There was a figure there, Jim,” went on Liz, earnestly, “of a Woman holding up a Baby, and people knelt down before it. What do you s’pose it was?”
“Can’t say!” replied the puzzled Jim. “Are ye sure ‘t was a church? Most like ‘t was a mooseum.”
“No, no!” said Liz. “‘T was a church for certain; there were folks praying in it.”
“Ah, well,” growled Jim, gruffly, “much good it may do ’em! I’m not of the prayin’ sort. A woman an’ a babby, did ye say? Don’t ye get such cranky notions into yer head, Liz! Women an’ babbies are common enough–too common, by a long chalk; an’ as for prayin’ to ’em–” Jim’s utter contempt and incredulity were too great for further expression, and he turned away, wishing her a curt “Good-night!”
“Good-night!” said Liz, softly; and long after he had left her she still sat silent, thinking, thinking, with the baby asleep in her arms, listening to the rain as it dripped, dripped heavily, like clods falling on a coffin lid. She was not a good woman–far from it. Her very motive in hiring the infant at so much a day was entirely inexcusable; it was simply to gain money upon false pretences–by exciting more pity than would otherwise have been bestowed on her had she begged for herself alone, without a child in her arms. At first she had carried the baby about to serve as a mere trick of her trade, but the warm feel of its little helpless body against her bosom day after day had softened her heart toward its innocence and pitiful weakness, and at last she had grown to love it with a strange, intense passion–so much that she would willingly have sacrificed her life for its sake. She knew that its own parents cared nothing for it, except for the money it brought them through her hands; and often wild plans would form in her poor tired brain–plans of running away with it altogether from the roaring, devouring city, to some sweet, humble country village, there to obtain work and devote herself to making this little child happy. Poor Liz! Poor, bewildered, heart-broken Liz! Ignorant London heathen as she was, there was one fragrant flower blossoming in the desert of her soiled and wasted existence–the flower of a pure and guileless love for one of those “little ones,” of whom it hath been said by an all-pitying Divinity unknown to her, “Suffer them to come unto Me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”