"They brought you here, then," said the Queen, "to take care of my
baby; but he'll not need you long, and then you can be going back
home."
"I'm afraid," Kathleen said, "that I don't know how to take care of a
baby very well. I might do something wrong with it. You see my mother
died when I was born, and so I was the only baby that there ever was
at our house, and I have hardly ever had anything to do with a real
live baby."
"You've had something to do with them that was not alive, haven't
you?" the Queen asked.
Kathleen smiled a little at that. "There were fifteen of them, I
think," she said.
"Well, you'll be having no more trouble with this one," the Queen
said, "than with any of those fifteen. Only do as you're told. I can't
take care of it myself, because it's the law that it must have a nurse
that's a mort--I mean it must have a nurse from outside this place.
There's the baby in the cradle there. Try can you make him go to
sleep."
Kathleen went to the cradle and looked at the baby. It was wide awake
and it stared at her like a little owl.
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