."

"I know, I know," said the girl.

"I thinks I was jealous of her," muttered the old woman; "it comes back
to me that I begrudged her making so much of my son, but I knows now
that she was a good 'un, and I speaks of her accordingly. She fretted
herself about getting strong enough to carry the child to be
christened, while we had the convenience of a parson near at hand, and I
wasn't going to oblige her; but the day after she died, the child was
ailing, and thinking it might require the benefit of a burial-service as
well as herself, I wrapped it up, and made myself decent, and took my
way to the village. I was half-way up the street, when I met a young
gentlewoman in a grey dress coming out of a cottage.

"'Good-day, my pretty lady,' says I. 'Could you show an old woman the
residence of the clergyman that would do the poor tinkers the kindness
of christening a sick child whose mother lies dead in a tilted cart at
the meeting of the four roads?'

"'I'm the clergyman's wife,' says she, with the colour in her face, 'and
I'm sure my husband will christen the poor baby. Do let me see it.'

"'It's only a tinker's child,' says I, 'a poor brown-faced morsel for a
pretty lady's blue eyes to rest upon, that's accustomed to the delicate
sight of her own golden-haired children; long may they live, and many
may you and the gentle clergyman have of them!'

"'I have no children,' says she, shortly, with the colour in her face
breaking up into red and white patches over her cheeks. 'Let me carry
the baby for you,' says she, a taking it from me. 'You must be tired.'

"All the way she kept looking at it, and saying how pretty it was, and
what beautiful long eyelashes it had, which went against me at the time,
my daughter, for I knowed it was like its mother.

"The clergyman was a pleasing young gentleman of a genteel appearance,
with a great deal to say for himself in the way of religion, as was
right, it being his business. 'Name this child,' says he, and she gives
a start that nobody sees but myself. So, thinking that the child being
likely to die, there was no loss in obliging the gentlefolk, says I,
looking down into the book as if I could read, 'Any name the lady thinks
suitable for the poor tinker's child;' and says she, the colour coming
up into her face, 'Call him Christian, for he shall be one.' So he was
named Christian, a name to give no manner of displeasure to myself or to
my family; it having been that of my hus