Rilla of Ingleside
"Why, the baby isn't dressed!" she exclaimed, in a shocked tone.
"Who was to dress him I'd like to know," demanded Mrs. Conover
truculently. "I hadn't time--took me all the time there was looking
after Min. 'Sides, as I told yez, I don't know nithing about kids. Old
Mrs. Billy Crawford, she was here when it was born and she washed it
and rolled it up in that flannel, and Jen she's tended it a bit since.
The critter is warm enough. This weather would melt a brass monkey."
Rilla was silent, looking down at the crying baby. She had never
encountered any of the tragedies of life before and this one smote her
to the core of her heart. The thought of the poor mother going down
into the valley of the shadow alone, fretting about her baby, with no
one near but this abominable old woman, hurt her terribly. If she had
only come a little sooner! Yet what could she have done--what could she
do now? She didn't know, but she must do something. She hated
babies--but she simply could not go away and leave that poor little
creature with Mrs. Conover--who was applying herself again to her black
bottle and would probably be helplessly drunk before anybody came.
"I can't stay," thought Rilla. "Mr. Crawford said I must be home by
supper-time because he wanted the pony this evening himself. Oh, what
can I do?"
She made a sudden, desperate, impulsive resolution.
"I'll take the baby home with me," she said. "Can I?"
"Sure, if yez wants to," said Mrs. Conover amiably. "I hain't any
objection. Take it and welcome."
"I--I can't carry it," said Rilla. "I have to drive the horse and I'd
be afraid I'd drop it. Is there a--a basket anywhere that I could put
it in?"
"Not as I knows on. There ain't much here of anything, I kin tell yez.
Min was pore and as shiftless as Jim. Ef ye opens that drawer over
there yez'll find a few baby clo'es. Best take them along."
Rilla got the clothes--the cheap, sleazy garments the poor mother had
made ready as best she could. But this did not solve the pressing
problem of the baby's transportation. Rilla looked helplessly round.
Oh, for mother--or Susan! Her eyes fell on an enormous blue soup tureen
at the back of the dresser.
"May I have this to--to lay him in?" she asked.
"Well, 'tain't mine but I guess yez kin take it. Don't smash it if yez
can help--Jim might make a fuss about it if he comes back alive--which
he sure will, seein' he ain't any good. He brung that old tureen out
from England with him--said it'd always been in the family. Him and Min
never used it--never had enough soup to put in it--but Jim thought the
world of it. He was mighty perticuler about some things but didn't
worry him none that there weren't much in the way o' eatables to put in
the dishes."
For the first time in her life Rilla Blythe touched a baby--lifted
it--rolled it in a blanket, trembling with nervousness lest she drop it
or--or--break it. Then she put it in the soup tureen.
"Is there any fear of it smothering?" she asked anxiously.
"Not much odds if it do," said Mrs. Conover.
Horrified Rilla loosened the blanket round the baby's face a little.
The mite had stopped crying and was blinking up at her. It had big dark
eyes in its ugly little face.
"Better not let the wind blow on it," admonished Mrs. Conover. "Take
its breath if it do."
Rilla wrapped the tattered little quilt around the soup tureen.
"Will you hand this to me after I get into the buggy, please?"
"Sure I will," said Mrs. Conover, getting up with a grunt.
And so it was that Rilla Blythe, who had driven to the Anderson house a
self-confessed hater of babies, drove away from it carrying one in a
soup tureen on her lap!
Rilla thought she would never get to Ingleside. In the soup tureen
there was an uncanny silence. In one way she was thankful the baby did
not cry but she wished it would give an occasional squeak to prove that
it was alive. Suppose it were smothered! Rilla dared not unwrap it to
see, lest the wind, which was now blowing a hurricane, should "take its
breath," whatever dreadful thing that might be. She was a thankful girl
when at last she reached harbour at Ingleside.
Rilla carried the soup tureen to the kitchen, and set it on the table
under Susan's eyes. Susan looked into the tureen and for once in her
life was so completely floored that she had not a word to say.
"What in the world is this?" asked the doctor, coming in.
Rilla poured out her story. "I just had to bring it, father," she
concluded. "I couldn't leave it there."
"What are you going to do with it?" asked the doctor coolly.
Rilla hadn't exactly expected this kind of question.
"We--we can keep it here for awhile--can't we--until something can be
arranged?" she stammered confusedly.
Dr. Blythe walked up and down the kitchen for a moment or two while the
baby stared at the white walls of the soup tureen and Susan showed
signs of returning animation.
Presently the doctor confronted Rilla.
"A young baby means a great deal of additional work and trouble in a
household, Rilla. Nan and Di are leaving for Redmond next week and
neither your mother nor Susan is able to assume so much extra care
under present conditions. If you want to keep that baby here you must
attend to it yourself."
"Me!" Rilla was dismayed into being ungrammatical. "Why--father--I--I
couldn't!"
"Younger girls than you have had to look after babies. My advice and
Susan's is at your disposal. If you cannot, then the baby must go back
to Meg Conover. Its lease of life will be short if it does for it is
evident that it is a delicate child and requires particular care. I
doubt if it would survive even if sent to an orphans' home. But I
cannot have your mother and Susan over-taxed."
The doctor walked out of the kitchen, looking very stern and immovable.
In his heart he knew quite well that the small inhabitant of the big
soup tureen would remain at Ingleside, but he meant to see if Rilla
could not be induced to rise to the occasion.
Rilla sat looking blankly at the baby. It was absurd to think she could
take care of it. But--that poor little, frail, dead mother who had
worried about it--that dreadful old Meg Conover.
"Susan, what must be done for a baby?" she asked dolefully.
"You must keep it warm and dry and wash it every day, and be sure the
water is neither too hot nor too cold, and feed it every two hours. If
it has colic, you put hot things on its stomach," said Susan, rather
feebly and flatly for her.
The baby began to cry again.
"It must be hungry--it has to be fed anyhow," said Rilla desperately.
"Tell me what to get for it, Susan, and I'll get it."
Under Susan's directions a ration of milk and water was prepared, and a
bottle obtained from the doctor's office. Then Rilla lifted the baby
out of the soup tureen and fed it. She brought down the old basket of
her own infancy from the attic and laid the now sleeping baby in it.
She put the soup tureen away in the pantry. Then she sat down to think
things over.
The result of her thinking things over was that she went to Susan when
the baby woke.
"I'm going to see what I can do, Susan. I can't let that poor little
thing go back to Mrs. Conover. Tell me how to wash and dress it."
Under Susan's supervision Rilla bathed the baby. Susan dared not help,
other than by suggestion, for the doctor was in the living-room and
might pop in at any moment. Susan had learned by experience that when
Dr. Blythe put his foot down and said a thing must be, that thing was.
Rilla set her teeth and went ahead. In the name of goodness, how many
wrinkles and kinks did a baby have? Why, there wasn't enough of it to
take hold of. Oh, suppose she let it slip into the water--it was so
wobbly! If it would only stop howling like that! How could such a tiny
morsel make such an enormous noise. Its shrieks could be heard over
Ingleside from cellar to attic.
"Am I really hurting it much, Susan, do you suppose?" she asked
piteously.
"No, dearie. Most new babies hate like poison to be washed. You are
real knacky for a beginner. Keep your hand under its back, whatever you
do, and keep cool."
Keep cool! Rilla was oozing perspiration at every pore. When the baby
was dried and dressed and temporarily quieted with another bottle she
was as limp as a rag.
"What must I do with it tonight, Susan?"
A baby by day was dreadful enough; a baby by night was unthinkable.
"Set the basket on a chair by your bed and keep it covered. You will
have to feed it once or twice in the night, so you would better take
the oil heater upstairs. If you cannot manage it call me and I will go,
doctor or no doctor."
"But, Susan, if it cries?"
The baby, however, did not cry. It was surprisingly good--perhaps
because its poor little stomach was filled with proper food. It slept
most of the night but Rilla did not. She was afraid to go to sleep for
fear something would happen to the baby. She prepared its three o'clock
ration with a grim determination that she would not call Susan. Oh, was
she dreaming? Was it really she, Rilla Blythe, who had got into this
absurd predicament? She did not care if the Germans were near
Paris--she did not care if they were in Paris--if only the baby
wouldn't cry or choke or smother or have convulsions. Babies did have
convulsions, didn't they? Oh, why had she forgotten to ask Susan what
she must do if the baby had convulsions? She reflected rather bitterly
that father was very considerate of mother's and Susan's health, but
what about hers? Did he think she could continue to exist if she never
got any sleep? But she was not going to back down now--not she. She
would look after this detestable little animal if it killed her. She
would get a book on baby hygiene and be beholden to nobody. She would
never go to father for advice--she wouldn't bother mother--and she
would only condescend to Susan in dire extremity. They would all see!
Thus it came about that Mrs. Blythe, when she returned home two nights
later and asked Susan where Rilla was, was electrified by Susan's
composed reply.
"She's upstairs, Mrs. Dr. dear, putting her baby to bed."
CHAPTER VIII
RILLA DECIDES
Families and individuals alike soon become used to new conditions and
accept them unquestioningly. By the time a week had elapsed it seemed
as it the Anderson baby had always been at Ingleside. After the first
three distracted nights Rilla began to sleep again, waking
automatically to attend to her charge on schedule time. She bathed and
fed and dressed it as skilfully as if she had been doing it all her
life. She liked neither her job nor the baby any the better; she still
handled it as gingerly as if it were some kind of a small lizard, and a
breakable lizard at that; but she did her work thoroughly and there was
not a cleaner, better-cared-for infant in Glen St. Mary. She even took
to weighing the creature every day and jotting the result down in her
diary; but sometimes she asked herself pathetically why unkind destiny
had ever led her down the Anderson lane on that fatal day. Shirley,
Nan, and Di did not tease her as much as she had expected. They all
seemed rather stunned by the mere fact of Rilla adopting a war-baby;
perhaps, too, the doctor had issued instructions. Walter, of course,
never had teased her over anything; one day he told her she was a brick.
"It took more courage for you to tackle that five pounds of new infant,
Rilla-my-Rilla, than it would be for Jem to face a mile of Germans. I
wish I had half your pluck," he said ruefully.
Rilla was very proud of Walter's approval; nevertheless, she wrote
gloomily in her diary that night:--
"I wish I could like the baby a little bit. It would make things
easier. But I don't. I've heard people say that when you took care of a