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Words: 100095 in 49 pages
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A VALENTINE AND A MISSION.
BY MARGARET EYTINGE.
Electa Eliza was never seen without that baby. Ever since it was three weeks old--it was born in August and now it was February--she had taken the whole care of it every day, excepting Sundays, from morning until night.
Mrs. Googens, her mother--her father was dead--when she wasn't out washing and ironing, was washing and ironing at home and having no other children besides Electa Eliza and the baby, of course the care of the small boy fell almost entirely on his sister.
This was rather hard, for she was only twelve years old, and lame besides, and it requires a great deal of patience and good nature to mind a baby, especially a lively, wide-awake baby who jumps, and "pat-a-cakes," and "goos," and "guggles," and wants to go "day-day" all the time.
It wasn't a pretty baby, and it wasn't an ugly baby. It had round blue eyes, round red cheeks, round wee nose, and a very bald head, and sometimes it looked so wise you couldn't help thinking it wasn't a baby at all, but a jolly, lazy old gentleman dwarf just making believe to be one, to be carried around and waited upon.
Electa Eliza had gone to school before the baby came, and had been a very good scholar--at the head of her class, in fact; but ever since she had been obliged to stay at home altogether, and it was but seldom she got a chance to look at her books.
Now around the corner from the house where Electa Eliza lived was a church, and on the steps of this church, sheltered by the porch, she often rested when tired walking with the baby.
Indeed, it was her favorite resting-place, and even when the weather was quite cold, she spent many hours there, watching most of the time the house directly opposite, at whose windows often appeared another girl and another baby.
This young girl, who was about three years older than Electa Eliza, and whose name was Theodora Judson, and her little brother were her mother's only children, just as Electa Eliza and her baby were her mother's only children.
But, ah! how far apart their paths in life were!
The Judson baby had a nurse-maid in constant attendance upon him, his sister only playing with him when she felt so inclined, and Miss Theodora had a French and German teacher, and a music teacher, and a riding-master, besides being one of the day-pupils at a celebrated academy famous for its excellent scholars. And her father and mother were the most indulgent of parents, refusing her nothing that she desired.
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