The conversation was here interrupted by the infant Zeph, who had improved the absorbed state of his parents' minds to carry out a plan he had been some time meditating, of upsetting the molasses pitcher. This was done with such celerity that before they could make a move both his fat hands were triumphantly spatted into the brown river, and he gave a crow of victory. "There! clean table-cloth this very night! Did I ever see such a young un!" cried Nabby, as she caught him away from the table. "Father thinks he's perfection. I should like to have him have the care of him once," she added, bustling and brightening and laughing as she scolded; while Hiel, making perfectly sincere but ill-directed efforts to scrape up the molasses with a spoon, succeeded only in distributing it pretty equally over the table-cloth. "Well, now, if there ain't a pair of you!" said Nabby, when she returned to the table. "If that ain't jest like a man!" "Wal, what would ye hev me--like a girl, or a dog, or what?" asked Hiel, as he stood, with his hands in his pockets, surveying the scene. "I did my best; but I ain't used to managing molasses and babies together; that's a fact." "It's lucky Mother went out to tea," said Nabby, as she whisked off the tablecloth, wiped the table, re-clothed it with a clean one, and laid the supper dishes back in a twinkling. "Now, Hiel, we'll try again; and be sure and put things where _he_ can't get 'em; he does beat all for mischief!" And the infant phenomenon, who had had his face washed and his apron changed in the interim, looked up confidingly in the face of each parent and crowed out a confident laugh. "Don't let's tell Mother," said Nabby; "she's always sayin' we don't govern him; and I'm sure she spoils him more than we do; but if she'd been here she wouldn't get over it for a week." In fact, the presence of Mother Jones in the family was the only drawback on Nabby's domestic felicity, that good lady's virtues, as we have seen, being much on the plaintive and elegiac order. There is indeed a class of elderly relatives who, their work in life being now over, have nothing to do but sit and pass criticisms on the manner in which younger pilgrims are bearing the heat and burden of the day. Although Nabby was confessedly one of the most capable and energetic of housekeepers, though everything in her domestic domains fairly shone and glittered with neatness, though her cake always rose even, though her bread was the whitest, her biscuits the lightest, and her doughnuts absolute perfection, yet Mother Jones generally sat mildly swaying in her rocking-chair and declaring herself consumed by care--and averring that she had "_everything_ on her mind." "I don't _do_ much, but I feel the care of everything," the old lady would remark in a quavering voice. "Young folks is so thoughtless; they don't feel care as I do." At first Nabby was a little provoked at this state of things; but Hiel only laughed it off.