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“Ow, if you please, don’t! It’s enough to dead and bury the baby, so it is, if you please!”

“Will you bring him sometimes, to see his father, Tilly?” inquired her mistress, drying her eyes; “when I can’t live here, and have gone to my old home?”

“Ow, if you please, don’t! ” cried Tilly, throwing back her head and bursting out into a howl–she looked at the moment uncommonly like Boxer–“Ow, if you please, don’t! Ow, what has everybody been and gone and done with everybody, making everybody else so wretched. Ow-w-w-w!”

The soft-hearted Slowboy trailed off at this juncture, into such a deplorable howl, the more tremendous from its long suppression, that she must infallibly have wakened the baby and frightened him into something serious (probably convulsions) if her attention had not been forcibly diverted from her misery for a moment, after which she stood for some time silent, with her mouth wide open; and then, posting off to the bed on which the baby lay asleep, danced in a weird, Saint Vitus manner, on the floor, and at the same time rummaged with her face and head among the bedclothes, apparently deriving much relief from those extraordinary operations.

Fortunately for all concerned in the little domestic drama, before a crisis had been reached, Edward Plummer revealed his secret, and his reasons for having been obliged to keep it. This cleared up the mystery concerning Mrs. Dot’s conduct, proving her to be the same loyal, loving little wife she always was: to the exquisite satisfaction of the honest carrier, his family and friends, and last but not least, Miss Slowboy, who wept copiously for joy, and wishing to include her young charge in the general interchange of congratulations, handed round the baby to everybody in succession, as if it were something to eat or drink.

Of course it became a serious duty now, to make such a day of it as should mark these events for a high feast and festival in the Peerybingle Calendar forevermore. Accordingly, Dot went to work to produce such an entertainment as should reflect undying honor on the house and on every one concerned, and in a very short space of time everybody in the house was in a state of flutter and domestic turmoil and during the flurry of preparation, everybody tumbled over Tilly Slowboy and the baby everywhere. Tilly never came out in such force before. Her ubiquity was the theme of universal admiration. She was a stumbling-block in the passage at five-and-twenty minutes past two; a man-trap in the kitchen at half-past two precisely; and a pitfall in the garret at five-and-twenty minutes to three. The baby’s head was, as it were, a test and touchstone for every description of matter,–animal, vegetable, and mineral. Nothing was in use that day that didn’t come, at some time or other, into close acquaintance with it.

That was a great celebration indeed, with Dot doing the honors in her wedding-gown, her eyes sparkling with happiness, and the good carrier, so jovial and so ruddy at the bottom of the table, and all their guests aiding to make the occasion a memorable and happy one.

There was a dance in the evening, for which Bertha played her liveliest tune. Inspired by infectious joy, old and young get up and join the whirling throng. Suddenly Caleb Plummer clutches Tilly Slowboy by both hands and goes off at score, Miss Slowboy firm in the belief that diving hotly in among the couples, and effecting any number of concussions with them, is your only principle of footing it, and ecstatically glad to abandon herself to the delights of the occasion, so long as she sees joy written again on the pretty face of her beloved little mistress, and feels that happiness has been restored to honest John Peerybingle and his family.

Hark! How the Cricket on the Hearth joins in the music, with its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp, and how the kettle hums!