"See!--this is where my little baby died--my little child--the only
one I ever had. It was a girl; we called it Lily--my name's Lily"--she
glanced up with a grin, as if conscious of how grotesquely
inappropriate, in her case, such a name was now; "it was such a little
thing--I didn't want it when it came. I never was fond of children,
and I wasn't one to play the mother. But, when it did come, it got
hold of me somehow--yes, it did! it did! I was fond of it, in my way.
As for him, he worshipped it; it was baby, baby, baby! all the time. I
was nowhere. It made me wild to hear him, and to see the way that he
went on. We fell out because I would have it brought up by hand. He
wanted me to let it have my milk--but I wouldn't have it. I wasn't
going to be any baby's slave--not likely! I don't think he ever
forgave me that. Then he was always at me because he said I neglected
it; and that made me worse than ever: I wasn't going to have a crying
brat thrust down my throat at every turn, and so I told him. 'Why
isn't there a place in which they bring up babies so that they needn't
worry their mothers?' I wanted to know. When I said that, how he did
look at me, and how he went on! I thought he would have killed me--but
I didn't care. He did his share of all the nursing that baby ever
had--and perhaps a little more."
Again the woman laughed.
"At last the little thing went wrong. It always was small; it never
seemed to grow--except thin. It was the queerest looking little mite,
with a serious face like a parson's, and great big eyes which seemed
to go right through you, as if it was looking at something which
nobody but itself could see. He would have it that it got worse and
worse, but he was always making such a fuss that I said he was making
a fool of the child. The doctor came and came, but I was pretty often
out, and when I wasn't I didn't always choose to see him, so I only
heard what he cared to tell me--and I didn't believe the half of that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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