‘Ah! perhaps baby can be saved! Perhaps it will be just the same!’
She spoke so brightly that it seemed as though her face might have shone in the gloom surrounding her.
She lit a candle, and went to a second and a third bed under the wall, where she awoke her little sisters and brothers, all of whom occupied the same room, Pulling out the washing-stand so that she could get behind it, she poured some water from a jug, and made them kneel around, putting their hands together with fingers exactly vertical. While the children, scarcely awake, awe-stricken at her manner, their eyes growing larger and larger, remained in this position, she took the baby from her bed—a child’s child—so immature as scarce to seem a sufficient personality to endow its producer with the maternal title. Tess then stood erect with the infant on her arm beside the basin, the next sister held the Prayer-Book open before her, as the clerk at church held it before the parson; and thus the emotional girl set about baptizing her child.
Her figure looked singularly tall and imposing as she stood in her long white nightgown, a thick
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