Crying and squalling it was all the
time, and it nearly ate her out of house and home, and yet it seemed
always sick and weak and thin. The neighbors came and they told her it
was not her child at all, but one of the Good People that had been put
in the place of it, and it was all her own fault for not having it
christened in the right time. But not a word of it all would she
listen to, and she said all the time that, whatever was wrong with it,
it was her own child and she'ld hear nothing to the contrary.
"It was an out-of-the-way place where they lived, and there was no
priest near, or she never could have kept it from being christened as
long as she did. But at last the neighbors themselves said that if she
didn't see to it, they would. And they said to her: 'It's not your
child at all that's in it, and if you'll have it christened you'll
see. And if you won't take the child to the priest with us now, we'll
go to him ourselves and tell him all about it. It's not right to keep
it from him longer.'
"So with that she thought it was no use and she'ld have to do as they
said, and she took the child and tried to dress him, ready to take him
to the priest to be christened.
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