Dusie, the canary, who pecked furiously at
the presuming hand that detained her.

At this the borrowed baby set up a howl of alarm, whereupon he was given
Sissy's jackstones--not altogether to that young lady's sorrow, for at
that moment Split was collecting a cruel pinch or bestowing a stinging
slap for every point in the game she had just won.

To the bathing of the child Miss Madigan gave her personal attention,
while Kate waited for the tub, into which it was her nightly task to
coax Frances. Then, when her charge was ready for bed, the devoted aunt
of other children sat rocking the borrowed baby softly till he fell
asleep. The whole household hushed that night when Baby Fauntleroy
Forrest's eyelids fell. An indignant lot of young Madigans were hustled
off to bed that his slumbers might not be disturbed; and yet the moment
Miss Madigan laid him, with infinite care and a sentimental smile, in
her own bed, his eyes flew open, like the disordered orbs of a wax doll
that has forgotten it was made to open its eyes when in a vertical
position and keep them shut when placed horizontally. He saw a strange
face bending over him, and he howled with terror.

Miss Madigan tried to comfort him, babbling fondest baby-talk in vain.

"I yant to go home!" wailed Aunt Anne's Fauntleroy.

Why, no; he didn't want to go home, the lady to whom he had been loaned
assured him. Mama was asleep and daddy was asleep and Bombey was asleep
and the pussy was--

"I yant to go home!" bellowed the borrowed baby.

But how could he go home? the lady, a bit impatiently, demanded. Wasn't
he all undressed? Did he want to go through the streets all
undressed--fie, fie, for shame!

"I yant to go home!" screamed Fauntleroy Forrest.

"Sissy--Irene--some one come here and amuse this child!" called Aunt
Anne, at her wits' end. Fauntleroy was black in the face from holding
his breath, and his borrower was nervously exhausted by the tension of a
day spent in attendance upon the lovely child.

A troop of nightgowned Madigans came joyously in. For the edification of
Fauntleroy, sitting up wide-eyed now in Aunt Anne's big bed, the tears
still on his cheeks, the Madigans made monkeys of themselves till he
dropped off asleep at last, when they were dismissed by a frazzled
maiden lady, who was left looking at the small thing lying in her bed as
at some strange animal whose waking she dreaded.

In the middle of the night and again toward morning the Madiga