While Joe was reciting the story of the rescue, Jimmy Flynn held on to his mother’s arm and whispered excitedly into her ear. The narrator had hardly finished ere Mrs. Flynn stepped forward to his side and faced the crowd. Ordinarily, this woman was undemonstrative and shy. Now she is unconscious of any timidity. The moment was an inspired one; to produce which Jimmy’s whisperings had played an important part.
"Mr. Blain, and friends all, give me the darling baby. It’ll take the place of the one God took from me last month. The clothes’ll fit——"
The bereft mother could get no further. Any woman who has lost a child will tell you why.
"My friends, you all know Mrs. Flynn, as I know her. If it were a matter of choosing between you, I should still say that no one in the town is better fitted for the sacred duty of mothering this little flood-driven stranger. None of us can say to whom the child belongs; whether there is a father or near relations. But until it is claimed by those who can prove the right to do so, the very best of all possible arrangements, and one I regard as providential, will be for Mrs. Flynn to take this baby to nourish and cherish it."
The murmurs of assent were unanimous. Joe, without any more delay, stepped into the boat, and, picking up the child—which all this time looked round, wondering in its baby way at this ado—put the little one into its foster-mother’s hands.
The river baby was evidently delighted beyond measure to receive a warm motherly embrace; judging, at any rate, by the way it gooed and crowed.
As soon as she could get through the admiring throng, Mrs. Flynn hastened home, and before long the baby, washed and dressed anew, was filling its "little Mary" with sweet new milk.
"With trumping horn and juvenile huzzas, At going home to spend their Christmas days, And changing Learning’s pains for Pleasure’s toys." TOM HOOD.
Out through the gateway of the National School, on one sultry afternoon in late December, tumbled a pack of noisy boys and scarcely less noisy girls; the while they kicked up a fine dust, yelling in an uproarious fashion. Were you, a stranger, to ask the cause of this demonstration of voice and capering limbs, you would be answered by a score of voices in rousing chorus—