"

"Oh!" said Euphemia.

At this moment, little Pat gave his first whimper. Perhaps he felt the
searching glance that fell upon him from the lady in the middle of the
room.

I immediately began to walk up and down the floor with him, and to sing
to him. I did not know any infant music, but I felt sure that a
soothing tune was the great requisite, and that the words were of small
importance. So I started on an old Methodist tune, which I remembered
very well, and which was used with the hymn containing the lines:

"Weak and wounded, sick and sore,"

and I sang, as soothingly as I could:

"Lit-tle Pat-sy, Wat-sy, Sat-sy,
Does he feel a lit-ty bad?
Me will send and get his bot-tle
He sha'n't have to cry-wy-wy."

"What an idiot!" said Euphemia, laughing in spite of her vexation.

"No, we aint no id-i-otses
What we want's a bot-ty mik."

So I sang as I walked to the kitchen door, and sent Jonas to the barn
for the bottle.

Pomona was in spasms of laughter in the kitchen, and Euphemia was trying
her best not to laugh at all.

"Who's going to take care of it, I'd like to know?" she said, as soon as
she could get herself into a state of severe inquiry.

"Some-times me, and some-times Jonas,"

I sang, still walking up and down the room with a long, slow step,
swinging the baby from side to side, very much as if it were grass-seed
in a sieve, and I were sowing it over the carpet.

When the bottle came, I took it, and began to feed little Pat. Perhaps
the presence of a critical and interested audience embarrassed us, for
Jonas and Pomona were at the door, with streaming eyes, while Euphemia
stood with her handkerchief to the lower part of her face, or it may
have been that I did not understand the management of bottles, but, at
any rate, I could not make the thing work, and the disappointed little
Pat began to cry, just as the whole of our audience burst into a wild
roar of laughter.

"Here! Give me that child!" cried Euphemia, forcibly taking Pat and the
bottle from me. "You'll make it swallow the whole affair, and I'm sure
its mouth's big enough."

"You really don't think," she said, when we were alone, and little Pat,
with his upturned blue eyes serenely surveying the features of the
good lady who knew how to feed him, was placidly pulling away at his
india-rubber tube, "that I will consent to your keeping such a creature
as this in the house? Why, he's