The little party toiled up to the hospitable door, and Mrs. Cobb
came out to meet them.

Rebecca was spokesman. Emma Jane's talent did not lie in eloquent
speech, but it would have been a valiant and a fluent child
indeed who could have usurped Rebecca's privileges and tendencies
in this direction, language being her native element, and words
of assorted sizes springing spontaneously to her lips.

"Aunt Sarah, dear," she said, plumping Jack-o'-lantern down on
the grass as she pulled his dress over his feet and smoothed his
hair becomingly, "will you please not say a word till I get
through-- as it's very important you should know everything
before you answer yes or no? This is a baby named Jacky Winslow,
and I think he looks like a Jack-o'-lantern. His mother has just
died over to North Riverboro, all alone, excepting for Mrs. Lizy
Ann Dennett, and there was another little weeny baby that died
with her, and Emma Jane and I put flowers around them and did the
best we could. The father--that's John Winslow--quarreled with
the mother--that was Sal Perry on the Moderation Road--and ran
away and left her. So he doesn't know his wife and the weeny baby
are dead. And the town has got to bury them because they can't
find the father right off quick, and Jacky has got to go to the
poor farm this afternoon. And it seems an awful shame to take him
up to that lonesome place with those old people that can't amuse
him, and if Emma Jane and Alice Robinson and I take most all the
care of him we thought perhaps you and Uncle Jerry would keep him
just for a little while. You've got a cow and a turn-up bedstead,
you know," she hurried on insinuatingly, "and there's hardly any
pleasure as cheap as more babies where there's ever been any