There was no help for it: he must take up the child! He did, and carried it home, grumbling all the way.

What right had the morsel to be lying there, a trap and a gin for his character, in the dark and the cold?
What would his wife say?
And what would the neighbours think?
All the way home he grumbled.
[Illustration: HE CARRIED IT HOME.] What happened there, how his wife received him with his burden, how she scolded and he grumbled, how it needed but the one day--the Christmas Day, in which nothing could well be done--to reconcile them to the gift, and how they brought him up, blessing the day when they found him, would be a story fit to make the truehearted of my readers both laugh and cry; but I have not room or time for it.
Of course, as they were in poor circumstances, hardly able indeed, not merely to make both ends meet, but to bring them far enough round the parcel of their necessities to let them see each other, their friends called their behaviour in refusing to hand over the brat to the parish authorities--which they felt as a reflection upon all who in similar circumstances would have done so--utter folly.

But when the moon-struck pair was foolish enough to say they did not know that he might not have been sent them instead of the still-born child that had hitherto been all their offspring, this was entirely too much for the nerves of the neighbours in general--that peculiar people always better acquainted with one's affairs, down to his faults and up to his duties, than he is himself.

It was rank superstition! It was a flying in the face of Providence! How could they expect to prosper, when they acted with so little foresight, rendering the struggle for existence severer still! They did not reckon what strength the additional motive, what heart the new love, what uplifting the hope of help from on high, kindled by their righteous deed, might give them--for God likes far better to help people from the inside than from the outside.

They did not think that this might be just the fresh sting of life that the fainting pair required.