The young wife turned and kissed the baby, with her large indolent eyes fixed upon the door somewhat nervously. She had touched the bell more than once without being seen by her husband.
"Wisdom and wit," continued papa, with a voice like that of a man who has overslept himself and hopes to make up for lost time by walking very fast, and talking very little to the purpose--"Wisdom and wit are bubbles"--
The young wife nodded with a sort of a smile, and the baby, rolling over in her lap, let fly both heels? at the nurse, who had crept in slyly, as if intent to lug him off to bed without his knowledge. But he was not in a humor to be trifled with; and so he flopped over on the other side, and, tumbling head over heels upon the floor, very much at large, lay there kicking and screaming till he grew black in the face. But the girl persisted, nevertheless, in lifting him up and lugging him off to the door, notwithstanding his outcries and the expostulatory looks of both papa and mamma--her wages were evidently in arrears, a whole quarter, perhaps.
"Wisdom and wit are bubbles," continued papa; "dominion and power, and beauty and strength"--
"And gingerbread and cheese," added mamma, in reply to something said by the girl in a sort of stage-whisper.
Whereupon papa, stopping short, and looking at mamma for a few moments, puzzled and well nigh speechless, gasped out--
"And _gingerbread and cheese!_ Why, what the plague do you mean, Sarah?"
"Nothing else for tea, my love, so Bridget says. Not a pound o' flour in the house; not so much as a loaf, nor a roll, nor a muffin to be had for love or money--so Bridget says."
"Nothin' to be had without _money_, ma'am; that's what I said."
That "_sir!_"--it was an admission of two quarters in arrear at least.
"Take that child to bed this moment! Begone! I'll bear this no longer."
The girl stared, muttered, grabbed the baby, and flung away with such an air--three quarters due, if there was a single day!--banged the door to after her, and bundled off up the front stairs at a hand-gallop, her tread growing heavier, and her voice louder and louder with every plunge.
"I wonder you can put up with such insolence. That girl is getting insufferable."
The poor wife looked up in amazement, but opened not her mouth; and the husband continued walking the floor with a tread that shook the whole house, and stopping occasionally, as if to watch the effect, or to see how much further he might go without injury to his own health.