Europe -- Description and travel -- Juvenile fiction; Young women -- Juvenile fiction
They ran up accordingly, and Rose took Katy into a large sunny nursery,
where, tied with pink ribbon into a little basket-chair and watched over
by a pretty young nurse, sat a dear, fat, fair baby, so exactly like
Rose in miniature that no one could possibly have mistaken the
relationship. The baby began to laugh and coo as soon as it caught sight
of its gay little mother, and exhibited just such another dimple as
hers, in the middle of a pink cheek. Katy was enchanted.
"Oh, you darling!" she said. "Would she come to me, do you think, Rose?"
"Why, of course she shall," replied Rose, picking up the baby as if she
had been a pillow, and stuffing her into Katy's arms head first. "Now,
just look at her, and tell me if ever you saw anything so enchanting in
the whole course of your life before? Isn't she big? Isn't she
beautiful? Isn't she good? Just see her little hands and her hair! She
never cries except when it is clearly her duty to cry. See her turn her
head to look at me! Oh, you angel!" And seizing the long-suffering baby,
she smothered it with kisses. "I never, never, never did see anything so
sweet. Smell her, Katy! Doesn't she smell like heaven?"
Little Rose was indeed a delicious baby, all dimples and good-humor and
violet-powder, with a skin as soft as a lily's leaf, and a happy
capacity for allowing herself to be petted and cuddled without
remonstrance. Katy wanted to hold her all the time; but this Rose would
by no means permit; in fact, I may as well say at once that the two
girls spent a great part of their time during the visit in fighting for
the possession of the baby, who looked on at the struggle, and smiled on
the victor, whichever it happened to be, with all the philosophic
composure of Helen of Troy. She was so soft and sunny and equable, that
it was no more trouble to care for and amuse her than if she had been a
bird or a kitten; and, as Rose remarked, it was "ten times better fun."
"I was never allowed as much doll as I wanted in my infancy," she said.
"I suppose I tore them to pieces too soon; and they couldn't give me tin
ones to play with, as they did wash-bowls when I broke the china ones."
"Were you such a very bad child?" asked Katy.
"Oh, utterly depraved, I believe. You wouldn't think so now, would you?
I recollect some dreadful occasions at school. Once I had my head pinned
up in my apron because I _would_ make faces at the other scholars, and
they laughed; but I promptly bit a bay-window through the apron, and ran
my tongue out of it till they laughed worse than ever. The teacher used
to send me home with notes fastened to my pinafore with things like this
written in them: 'Little Frisk has been more troublesome than usual
to-day. She has pinched all the younger children, and bent the bonnets
of all the older ones. We hope to see an amendment soon, or we do not
know what we shall do.'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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