and within a week her household was re-established in its normal
condition. The baby, rolled up in an old quilt and laid upon her
bed, received little attention except when the pangs of hunger
wrung lusty protests from his vigorous lungs, and had it not been
for Mrs. Fitzpatrick's frequent visits, the unwelcome little human
atom would have fared badly enough. For the first two weeks of its
life the motherly-hearted Irish woman gave an hour every day to the
bathing and dressing of the babe, while Irma, the little girl of
Paulina's household, watched in wide-eyed wonder and delight;
watched to such purpose, indeed, that before the two weeks had gone
Mrs. Fitzpatrick felt that to the little girl's eager and capable
hands the baby might safely be entrusted.

"It's the ould-fashioned little thing she is," she confided to her
husband, Timothy. "Tin years, an' she has more sinse in the hair outside
av her head than that woman has in the brains inside av hers. It's aisy
seen she's no mother of hers--ye can niver get canary burrds from owls'
eggs. And the strength of her," she continued, to the admiring and
sympathetic Timothy, "wid her white face and her burnin' brown eyes!"

And so it came that every day, no matter to what depths the
thermometer might fall, the little white-faced, white-haired
Russian girl with the "burnin'" brown eyes brought Paulina's
baby to be inspected by Mrs. Fitzpatrick's critical eye.
Before a year had passed Irma had won an assured place in
the admiration and affection of not only Mrs. Fitzpatrick,
but of her husband, Timothy, as well.

But of Paulina the same could not be said, for with the passing months
she steadily descended in the scale of Mrs. Fitzpatrick's regard.