Tea went off quite swimmingly, with Mr. John Skiddy at the urn. The baby, thanks to Ruth's maternal management, lay sweetly sleeping in his little wicker cradle, dreaming of a distant land flowing with milk and honey, and _looking_ as if he was destined to a protracted nap; although it was very perceptible that Mr. Skiddy looked anxious when a door was shut hard, or a knife or fork dropped on the table; and he had several times been seen to close his teeth tightly over his lip, when a heavy cart rumbled mercilessly past.
Tea being over, the boarders dispersed their various ways; Ruth notifying Mr. Skiddy of her willingness to take the child whenever it became unmanageable. Then Mr. Skiddy, very gingerly, and with a cat-like tread, put away the tea-things, muttering an imprecation at the lid of the tea-pot, as he went, for falling off. Then, drawing the evening paper from his pocket, and unfurling it, (with one eye on the cradle,) he put up his weary legs and commenced reading the news.
Hark! a muffled noise from the cradle! Mr. Skiddy started, and applied his toe vigorously to the rocker--it was no use. He whistled--it didn't suit. He sang--it was a decided failure. Little Skiddy had caught sight of the pretty bright candle, and it was his present intention to scream till he was taken up to investigate it.
Miserable Skiddy! He recollected, now, alas! too late, that Mrs. Skiddy always carefully screened the light from Tommy's eyes while sleeping. He began to be conscious of a growing respect for Mrs. Skiddy, and a growing aversion to _her_ baby. Yes; in that moment of vexation, with that unread evening paper before him, he actually called it _her_ baby.
How the victimized man worried through the long evening and night--how he tried to propitiate the little tempest with the castor, the salt-cellar, its mother's work-box, and last, but not least, a silver cup he had received for his valor from the Atlantic Fire Company--how the baby, all-of-a-twist, like Dickens' young hero kept asking for "more"--how he laid it on its back, and laid it on its side, and laid it on its stomach, and propped it up on one end in a house made of pillows, and placed the candle at the foot of the bed, in the vain hope that that luminary might be graciously deemed by the infant tyrant a substitute for his individual exertions--and how, regardless of all these philanthropic efforts, little Skiddy stretched out his arms imploringly, and rooted suggestively at his father's breast, in a way to move a heart of stone--and how Mr. Skiddy said several words not to be found in the catechism--and how the daylight found him as pale as a potato sprout in a cellar, with all sorts of diagonal lines tattoed over his face by enraged little finger nails--and how the little horn, that for years had curled up so gracefully toward his nose, was missing from the corner of his moustache--are they not all written in the ambitious Californian's repentant memory?