The child awoke in the bedroom above and cried. Nancy Joe went flip-flapping upstairs, and brought her down with much clucking and cackling. Kate took the child and fed her from a feeding-bottle which had been warming on the oven top. She was very tender with the little one, kissing all its extremities in the way that women have, worrying its legs, and putting its feet into her mouth. Pete came in, hot and perspiring, and Kate handed the child back to Nancy. “Hould hard,” cried Pete; “don't take her off yet. Give me a hould of her, the lil rogue. My sailor! What a child it is, though! Look at that, now. She's got a grip of my thumb. What a fist, to be sure! It's lying in my hand like a meg. Did you stick a piece of dough on the wall at your last baking, Nancy? Just as well to keep the evil eye off. Coo--oo--oo! She's going it reg'lar, same as the tide of a summer's day. By jing, Kitty, I didn't think there was so much fun in babies.” Kate, seated at the table, was pouring out the tea, and a sudden impulse seized her. “That's the way,” she said. “First the wife is everything; but the child comes, and then good-bye to the mother who brought it.” “No, by gough!” said Pete. “The child is eighteen carat goold for the mother's sake, but the mother is di'monds for sake of the child. If I lost that little one, Kitty, it would be like losing the half of you.” “Losing, indeed!” said Nancy. “Who's talking about losing? Does she look like it, bless her lil heart!” “Take her into the kitchen, Nancy,” said Kate. “Going to have a rare do to-day,” said Pete, over a mouthful. “I'm off for Douglas, to see Philip made Dempster. Coming home with himself by way of St. John's. It's all arranged, woman. Boys to meet the carriage by Kirk Christ Lezayre at seven o'clock smart. Then out I'm getting, laying hould of the drum, the band is striking up, and we're bringing him into Ramsey triumphant. Oh, we'll be doing it grand,” said Pete, blowing over the rim of his saucer. “John the Clerk is tremenjous on the trombones, and there's no bating Jonaique with the clar'net--the man is music to his little backbone. The town will be coming out too, and the fishermen shouting like one man. We're bound to let the Governor see we mane it. A friend's a friend, say I, and we're for bucking up for the man that's bucking up for us. And when he goes to the Tynwald Coort there, it'll be lockjaw and the measles with some of them. If the ould Governor's got a tongue like a file, Philip's got a tongue like a scythe--he'll mow them down. 'No harbour-dues,' says he, 'till we've a raisonable hope of harbour improvements. Build your embankments for your trippers in Douglas if you like, but don't ask the fisher-, men to pay for them.'” Pete wiped his mouth and charged his pipe. “It'll be a rare ould dust, but we're not thinking of ourselves only, though. Aw, no, no. If there wasn't nothing doing we would be giving him a little tune for all, coming home Dempster.”