"Well, if you are not, I am," said Tom, sadly; "and I can't help thinking that if old Humphrey Bone had done his duty better by us, Jock would have turned out a different man." "But tell me, Tom, are they going to do anything dreadful to him?" "Three months on bread and water, my lass," said Tom Morrison,--"bread of repentance and water of repentance; and I hope they'll do him good, but I'm afraid when he comes out he'll be after the hares and pheasants again, and I'm always in a fret lest he should get into a fight with the keepers. But there, my lass, I can't help it. I'd give him a share of the business if he'd take to it, but he wean't. I shan't fret, and if people like to look down on me about it, they may." "But they don't, Tom, dear," cried Polly, with her face all in dimples, the great trouble of her life forgotten for the time. "I've got such a surprise for you." "Surprise for me, lass? What is it? A custard for tea?" "No, no; what a boy you are to eat!" cried Polly, merrily. "Just you come and smell sawdust all day, and see if you don't eat," cried Tom. "Here, what is it?" "Oh, you must wait. There, what a shame! and you haven't kissed baby." She ran out to fetch the baby and hold it up to him to be kissed, while she looked at him with all a young mother's pride in the little one, of which the great sturdy fellow had grown so fond. "It makes me so happy, Tom," she said, with the tears in her eyes. "Happy, does it, lass?" "Oh, yes. So--so happy," she cried, nestling to him with her baby in her arms, and sighing with her sense of safety and content, as the strong muscles held her to the broad breast. "I was afraid, Tom, that you might not care for it--that you would think it a trouble, and-- and--" "That you were a silly little wife, and full of foolish fancies," he cried, kissing her tenderly. "Yes, yes, Tom, I was," she cried, smiling up at him through her tears. "But come--your tea. Here, Budge." Budge had been a baby herself once--a workhouse baby--and she looked it still, at fourteen. Not a thin starveling, but a sturdy workhouse baby, who had thriven and grown strong on simple oatmeal fare. Budge was stout and rosy, and daily putting on flesh at Tom Morrison's cottage, where her duty was to "help missus, and nuss the bairn." But nearly always in Polly's sight; for the first baby was too sacred a treasure in that cottage home to be trusted to any hands for long. She was a good girl, though, was Budge; her two faults prominent being that when she cried she howled--terribly, and that "the way"--to use Tom Morrison's words--"she punished a quartern loaf was a sight to see."