dismay, he did not seem to know what it was, although he continued to
exhibit every symptom of a ravenous and constantly augmenting appetite.
They tried him with every imaginable viand, but in vain; they even put
morsels into his mouth, but he had lost the power of mastication, and
could not retain them. The more they labored, the greater became his
exasperation, until at last there was such a hubbub and confusion on the
score of Master Archibald as that hitherto rather insignificant little
personage should have felt proud to occasion.

Among the anxious and bewildered people who thronged the nursery at this
juncture was a young woman who acted as wet-nurse to the latest born of
the Malmaisons, a baby-girl three months old.

She was a healthy and full-bodied peasant, and as she pressed forward to
have her look at the now frantic Archibald, she held the nursing
infant--the only serene and complacent member of the assemblage--to her
open breast. Archibald caught sight of her, and immediately reached toward
her, arms, mouth and all, accompanying the action by an outcry so eager,
impatient, and gluttonous that it was capable of only one interpretation.
An incredible interpretation, certainly, but that made no difference;
there was nothing else to be done. Honest Maggie, giggling and rubicund,
put aside her complacent nursling (who thereupon became anything but
complacent) and took to her kind bosom this strapping and unreasonable
young gentleman, who had already got many of his second teeth. That did
not prevent him from making an unconscionably good supper, and thenceforth
the only person likely to be disturbed by his new departure in
gormandizing was Maggie herself. Everything being thus happily arranged,
the household dispersed about its business, the Baronet declaring, with a
great laugh, that he had always said Archie was but a babe in arms, and
this proved it!