I could no longer
dispose of my days and hours as I liked best, but was on the contrary
forced to devote many of them to occupations of a most distasteful
nature.
The coming of this insignificant stranger into our home seemed a
disturbing and restless evil in my eyes. Naturally my stepmother was
beside herself with ecstacy, but why should she have expected the rest
of the household to be as absurdly enthusiastic?
When baby slept, the silence and stillness of death were sacredly and
solemnly imposed upon all. When baby was awake, the clatter provoked
for its infantship's pleasure was noisome and deafening to all.
With the advent of this undesirable relative into our home is
associated, for me, the remembrance of all such impatient entreaties
as, "Amey, bring your toys here to baby--Amey, come and sing to
baby--Amey, come and rock baby to sleep"--and I, though striving to
encourage a good intention and a hopeful outlook, finally succumbed to
the very human perversity of my soul, and when every atom of ordinary
endurance had given out, I realized that I had ended by loathing the
very name, or sight, or idea of the unwelcome baby.
Then, came a fresh burden of domestic worries to my unfortunate
step-mother. She could not trust her darling to the care of servants;
each one that she tried seemed determined to kill the little idol;
they handled it as roughly and carelessly as if it were an ordinary
baby; shook it when it screamed and refused to rock it while it slept.
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