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“You don’t like it, eh?” Pattie pursued, hope immediately abounding.

Mrs. Limp sniffed.

“Well,” said Pattie, her little heart all in a flutter–she was afflicted, too, with an adorable lisp in excitement–“I th’pothe I ought t’ be thorry.”

Mrs. Limp seemed dolefully to agree.

Pattie Batch came then straight to the point. “I been thavin’ up,” said she. “I been hard at it for more ‘n theven monthth.”

Mrs. Limp lifted her blue eyelids.

“Yep,” said Pattie, briskly; “an’ I got thirty-four twenty-three right here in my thkirt. Where’th that baby? “

The baby was fetched and deposited in her arms.

“Boy or girl?” Pattie inquired, with business-like precision.

“Boy,” Mrs. Limp sighed, “thank God!”

Pattie Batch was vastly disappointed. She had fancied a girl. It was a shock, indeed, to her ardour. It was so much of a shocking disappointment that Pattie Batch might easily have wept. A boy–a boy ! Oh, shoot! But still, she reflected, considering the scarcity, a boy–this boy, in fact, cleaned up–Pattie Batch was all the time running the mottled infant over with sharply appraising eyes–yes, the child had possibilities, unquestionably so, which soap and water might astonishingly improve–and, in fine, this little boy might–

“Mithuth Limp,” said Pattie, looking that lady straight in the eye, “I’ll give you twenty-five dollarth for thith here baby. By George, I will!”

The astonished mother jumped out of her chair and her lassitude at the same instant.

“Not another thent!” Pattie craftily declared. “Here–take your baby.”

Mrs. Limp did not quite take the baby. That would be but a pale indication of the speed, directness and outraged determination with which she acted. She snatched the baby away, with the precision of a brisk woodpecker after an escaping worm; and she hugged it until it howled for mercy–and she hushed it–and she crooned endearment–and she kissed the baby with such fervour and persistency that she saved its puckered face a washing. And then she turned–in a rage of indignation–in a storm of scorn–in a whirlwind of execration–upon poor little Pattie Batch. But Pattie Batch was gone. Discreet little Pattie Batch didn’t need to be told ! Her little feet were already pattering over the trail to Swamp’s End; and she was crying as she ran.

* * * * *

But Pattie Batch’s wish for a baby went back to the very beginnings of things. Ask Gingerbread Jenkins. Gingerbread Jenkins knows. It was Gingerbread Jenkins who had found her, long ago–Pattie was little more than a baby herself, then–on the Bottle River Trail; and to Gingerbread Jenkins’ astonishment the child was lugging a gun into the woods.

“Where you goin’?” says Gingerbread Jenkins.

“Gunnin’.”

“Gunnin’, eh? What for?”

“Jutht gunnin’.”

“But what you gunnin’ for ?”

“None o’ your bithneth,” says saucy little Pattie Batch.

“It is my business,” Gingerbread Jenkins declared; “an’ if you don’t tell me what you’re gunnin’ for I’ll have you home in a jiffy.”

“Well,” says Pattie, “I’m–gunnin’.”

“What for?”

“Storks,” says Pattie.

“Goin’ t’ kill’em?” Gingerbread inquired.

“No,” says Pattie.

“What’s your gun for?”

“I’m goin’ t’ wing a couple,” says Pattie, “an’ tame ’em.”

That was Pattie Batch.