Innocent Birds Read Free Page A

her ears and hid her head under the bedclothes. When she peeped out again she heard the doctor washing his hands, and the nurse, Mrs. Tory, say very despairingly, ‘Thee’s bed be worse ruined than when t’ other did come, for there bain’t a dry patch on en.’
    And as though to confirm Mrs. Tory’s words about the bed, a tiny voice began to cry that Minna thought was a little pig’s.
    In the field where the cows were, Minna taunted John Pim.
    ‘You can’t make a baby like my mammy,’ she said.
    John wisely replied, as so many have done before him, ‘that he didn’t know what he could do until he tried.’
    Minna laughed and ran on, lifting her heels higher than was necessary.
    When school was over she walked home in a very thoughtful manner, and kept away from John.
    ‘No, don’t ’ee touch I,’ she said in a grand knowing way, when John tried to pull her off the stepping-stones into the brook. ‘Don’t ’ee touch I, for ’tis most like ’ee ’d do it.’
    ‘Do what?’ asked John, with one foot on a stone and the other held high above the water.
    ‘’Tis two that kiss same as black slugs in wet grass that do bring a baby; ’tain’t Mrs. Tory.’
    She ran away laughing, partly because of what she had said, and partly because John’s foot had slipped and he had fallen backwards into the water.
    John wanted to know more. But he did not ask Minna to explain the matter better, because ‘they maidens be so fun making’; and so instead he asked the school teacher. After receiving a pretty sharp caning for his inquiry, John decided in his child’s mind that it must be a very hard matter, and a very troublesome one, to make a baby. As he grew older, he very much doubted whether such a difficult task could ever be managed by him, even if Minna, and later Annie, would modestly help.
    When John Pim was grown to man’s estate, and began to court Annie Brine, who was in service with Miss Pettifer at Weyminster, he very naturally looked forward to his wedding day with a more than common anxiety.
    John hoped that his mind would be then relieved of the doubt that troubled it.
    And even if his doubt wasn’t removed then, Annie had told him that Miss Pettifer was well able, both by breeding and education, to answer any question, however hard, that was put to her; and so Pim trusted that his Annie’s mistress wouldn’t allow such a state of sad ignorance to always clog the life of the husband of her late faithful handmaiden. The wedding day came,as such days will, sooner than expected, and poor Pim was rendered more than usually nervous by the extreme wonder and whiteness of Annie’s wedding frock. He tried not to listen to his new boots, creaking as he walked up the church aisle with her, and he looked down at his black trousers—likewise new—hoping that they would comfort him, and explain why Annie looked so different. In the pocket of those very wedding trousers—and no doubt it is there still—there was, for Annie had asked him to keep it safe, a letter that Miss Pettifer had written a day or two before to Annie Brine.
    ‘Dear Brine‚’ wrote Miss Pettifer, ‘I wish you every happiness as Mrs. Pim. But kindly remember that married happiness always brings responsibilities. You will know what I mean by this when your first child comes’—and so poor Annie did. ‘My present to you will be a fender and fire-irons. And I should be glad if you would kindly ask Mr. Balliboy to call here for them as soon as possible. As you know, for you have been sent down to clean them, they have been kept in my cellar for some years, and if you didn’t get all the rust off them you will have plenty of time to finish cleaning them at Madder. My new maid, Parsons, is very unsatisfactory; she says she isn’t used to margarine, but that’s only one of her lies.
    ‘One last word of advice to you, Brine: keep all the money your husband earns, and never allow him to go, no, not for one moment, to the inn.—I remain,