The shop-mistress curtsied and smiled, and felt certain the young lady
would buy one. She raised a garishly dressed specimen as she spoke,
which was half-doll, half-golliwog, and hideously ugly. But Lotty was
not impressed. She was too old, she said, for dolls like that; but had
the good woman bassinets for these?
'Oh yes,' she had, 'lovely little cradles, with rockers and all. Look!'
Lotty did look, and was delighted. These were just the thing for
Norlans. How sweet he would show in one of these, with its tiny cushion,
its muslin drapery, and its blanket of blue! And so one was bought and
sent on board. That night Norlans was put to bed in it. Lotty sat down
and rocked her baby; and as she rocked she sang a pretty cradle hymn:
'Baloo, baloo, my wee wee thing,
Oh, softly close thy blinkin' e'e;
Baloo, baloo, my dear wee thing,
Now thou art doubly dear to me.
Thy face is simple, sweet, and mild,
Like ony simmer evenin' fa';
Thy sparklin' e'e is bonny black,
Thy neck is like the mountain snaw.
Baloo, baloo, baloo.'
And baby Norlans was willing to give himself up entirely to the luxury
of the situation, and was soon sound enough asleep.
Then daddy Ben was called in--he had to walk on tiptoe--to take just one
peep at him.
'Isn't he just lovelier than anything on earth, papa?' said Lotty.
'Lovelier,' replied Ben, 'than biled cockles, and every bit as white and
clean.'
A day or two after this Lotty ran on deck when Ben was hung up as usual
on a belaying-pin, the ship having been put to sea again, and it being
the lad's watch off.
'Oh papa,' she cried, pretending to be awfully excited, 'you are to run
down below at once. Grandma says Norlans has cut a "toofams."'
Of course a 'toofams' meant a tooth; and Ben, keeping up the game, went
below at once and found it was the truth, and was wise enough to go into
raptures over the pearly little appearance.
But, happy though his home was, it was evident enough that the sealkin
retained a good deal of nature about him, and would fain have obeyed the
call of the wild, and plunged right away down into the clear sunny sea,
a blink of which he could catch through one of the scupper-holes on the
lee side. And always now, when taken on deck for what Lotty termed his
constitutional, it was towards a lee scupper-hole he crawled or waddled
his way, and seemed never to tire watching the waves. Sometimes when
there was a freshening breeze, with plenty of sail on her, the sea would
gurgle up as she dipped to leeward, and some portion would be under
water. Then Norlans spread his flippers at once and made pretence to
swim, and had to be taken away to be towelled and placed in the sunshine
to dry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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