and I tied round her poor little waist a petticoat which Binnahan had outgrown, but I almost repented of having done so when I saw at a little distance a native woman, whom she had accompanied, denuding the child's shoulders of its fur cape, the petticoat being considered quite sufficient clothing without other addition. I heard that the child died soon afterwards; but I had also reason to believe that it was not before a kind priest from the Benedictine Mission of New Norcia, an account of which will be found hereafter, had found and taken pity on the poor forlorn little one.
The next occasion of our being asked to adopt a child had a touch of the absurd. The wife of a convict who had been sent to prison for a fresh offence, applied to us for assistance on being thus thrown, of a sudden, upon her own resources, and the second time that she came for relief she brought with her a pretty little girl of two years old, her only child, and gravely requested me to adopt it. She had bestowed upon it, at its christening, so great a variety of fine names that I could not help thinking that she must have cherished from its birth an idea of effecting some such transfer as that which she now proposed to me, and that she had been under the impression that the names of Angelina and Elfrida, which she had given it, would prove as good as a little dowry, and would confer on their possessor a claim to a higher grade of life.
