Ruth adroitly looked out the window, while Mr. Skiddy wiped his face and sopped his neckcloth, after which she busied herself in picking up the ladles, spoons, forks, dredging-boxes, mortars, pestles, and other culinary implements, with which the floor was strewn, in the vain attempt to propitiate the distracted infant. "I think I _will_ spare the little dear to you a few minutes," said Skiddy, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, "while I run over to the bakery to get a loaf for tea. Mrs. Skiddy has probably been unexpectedly detained, and Biddy is so afraid of her labor in her absence, that she has taken French leave. I shall be back soon," said Skiddy, turning away in disgust from the looking-glass, as he caught sight of his limpsey dicky and collapsed shirt-bosom. Ruth took the poor worried baby tenderly, laid it on its stomach across her lap, then loosening its frock strings, began rubbing its little fat shoulders with her velvet palm. There was a maternal magnetism in that touch; baby knew it! he stopped crying and winked his swollen eyelids with the most luxurious satisfaction, as much as to say, there, now, that's something like! Gently Ruth drew first one, then the other, of the magnetized baby's chubby arms from its frock sleeves, substituting a comfortable loose night-dress for the tight and heated frock; then she carefully drew off its shoe, admiring the while the beauty of the little blue veined, dimpled foot, while Katy, hush as any mouse, looked on delightedly from her little cricket on the hearth, and Nettie, less philosophical, was more than half inclined to cry at what she considered an infringement of her rights. Mr. Skiddy's reflections as he walked to the bakery were of a motley character. Upon the whole, he inclined to the opinion that it was "not good for man to be alone," especially with a nursing baby. The premeditated and unmixed malice of Mrs. Skiddy in leaving the baby, instead of Sammy or Johnny, was beyond question. Still, he could not believe that her desire for revenge would outweigh all her maternal feelings. She would return by-and-bye; but where could she have gone? People cannot travel with an empty purse; but, perhaps even now, at some tantalizing point of contiguity, she was laughing at the success of her nefarious scheme; and Mr. Skiddy's face reddened at the thought, and his arms instinctively took an a-kimbo attitude. But then, perhaps, she _never meant_ to come back. What was he to do with that baby? A wet-nurse would cost him six dollars a week; and, as to bringing up little Tommy by hand, city milk would soon finish him. And, to do Mr. Skiddy justice, though no Socrates, he was a good father to his children.