While he was worrying over this, and
over her, his little wife was merely shielding a secret belonging to
Edward Plummer, Bertha's brother, who had just come back, after many
year's absence in the golden South Americas.
So unaccustomed was Dot to keeping a secret that it caused her to act
very strangely, and give her husband reason to misjudge her, which
almost broke her loving little heart. All of which trouble Tilly Slowboy
did not understand, but was deeply affected by it, and when she found
her mistress alone, sobbing piteously, was quite horrified, exclaiming:
"Ow, if you please, don't! It's enough to dead and bury the baby, so it
is, if you please!"
"Will you bring him sometimes, to see his father, Tilly?" inquired her
mistress, drying her eyes; "when I can't live here, and have gone to my
old home?"
"Ow, if you please, _don't!_" cried Tilly, throwing back her head and
bursting out into a howl--she looked at the moment uncommonly like
Boxer--"Ow, if you please, don't! Ow, what has everybody been and gone
and done with everybody, making everybody else so wretched. Ow-w-w-w!"
The soft-hearted Slowboy trailed off at this juncture, into such a
deplorable howl, the more tremendous from its long suppression, that she
must infallibly have wakened the baby and frightened him into something
serious (probably convulsions) if her attention had not been forcibly
diverted from her misery for a moment, after which she stood for some
time silent, with her mouth wide open; and then, posting off to the bed
on which the baby lay asleep, danced in a weird, Saint Vitus manner, on
the floor, and at the same time rummaged with her face and head among
the bedclothes, apparently deriving much relief from those extraordinary
operations.
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