“Good morning, ma’am,” said the nurse, who no sooner ceased to walk than she began a kind of diagonal movement without progression, in which one heel clacked, and all her petticoats swung, and the baby who, head downwards, was snorting with gaping mouth under the woollen coverlet, was supposed to be soothed. “Good morning, ma’am. You’ll excuse my intruding”— “Not at all, mum,” said Mrs. Lake. By which she did not mean to reject the excuse, but to disclaim the intrusion. When the nurse was not speaking, she kept time to her own rocking by a peculiar click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth; and indeed it sometimes mingled, almost confusingly, with her conversation. “You’re very obliging, ma’am, I’m sure,” said she, and, persuaded by Mrs. Lake, she took a seat. “You’ll excuse me for asking a singular question, ma’am, but _was your husband’s father and grandfather both millers_?” “They was, mum,” said Mrs. Lake. “My husband’s father’s father built this mill where we now stands. It cost him a deal of money, and he died with a debt upon it. My husband’s father paid un off; and he meant to have built a house, mum, but he never did, worse luck for us. He allus says, says he,—that’s my husband’s father, mum,—’I’ll leave that to Abel,’—that’s my maester, mum. But nine year ago come Michaelmas”— Mrs. Lake’s story was here interrupted by a frightful outburst of coughing from the unfortunate baby, who on the removal of the woollen shawl presented an appearance which would have been comical but for the sympathy its condition demanded. A very red and utterly shapeless little face lay, like a crushed beet-root, in a mass of dainty laces almost voluminous enough to have dressed out a bride. As a sort of crowning satire, the face in particular was surrounded by a broad frill, spotted with bunches of pink satin ribbon, and farther encased in a white satin hood of elaborate workmanship and fringes. [Picture: A very red and utterly shapeless little face lay, like a crushed beet-root, in a mass of dainty laces almost voluminous enough to have dressed out a bride] The contrast between the natural red of the baby’s complexion and its snowy finery was ludicrously suggestive of an over-dressed nigger, to begin with; but when, in the paroxysms of its cough, the tiny creature’s face passed by shades of plum-color to a bluish black, the result was appalling to behold. Mrs. Lake’s experienced ears were not slow to discover that the child had got whooping-cough, which the nurse confessed was the case. She also apologized for bringing in the baby among Mrs. Lake’s children, saying that she had “thought of nothing but the poor little chirrub herself.”