Chapter I: The New Baby Was Called Robin

The sun itself seemed to be keeping holiday on the morning on which my brother opened his eyes on the world. The day was a June day, one of those days when the people who are fortunate enough to live in the country feel quite too lazy to work--when a delicious languor, a rich hazy beauty pervades the grass, trees, flowers, as well as the more distant landscape. The sort of day when those who reside in Eaton Square, or any other part of Belgravia, sit peacefully and enjoy the scent of the freshly arranged window gardens, and look forward with interest to a drive in the Park by-and-by.

Yes, the sun was keeping holiday, and pouring down right genially and right lovingly his happy rays on the earth.

Impartial, as betokens all true sovereignty, was this king of day; no idea had he of favouring the rich more than the poor. Had this not been his invariable and unexceptionable rule, it is highly probable that Mrs. Timbs, of Blind Alley, Spitalfields, London, would have been left, if not in darkness, yet in considerable fog and obscurity.

Mrs. Timbs had given birth an hour ago to her sixth son and tenth child, and she herself was just preparing to take holiday, the first holiday she had had for years. Supposing a choice to have been given her, she might have preferred to slave on a little longer; but it was not to be; she was about to stop working from morning to night, and almost from night to morning again: she was about to stop feeling hungry and cold; she was going away to a better place than she had ever known before; in short, Mrs. Timbs was going to die.

The sun, impartial and kind, struggled through the dusty window, and lay in two golden bars on the pillow. One of these grand bars of light took the new-born baby's red face into its embrace and glorified it; the other warmed the dying mother's cheek.

Patty and Molly, the two elder girls, aged respectively thirteen and fourteen, stood by the side of the bed; the sun's rays did not touch them; they stood in shadow, fit emblem of the long and dusty bit of road they had to tread before they could look for rest and a holiday, poor things!

Seven other children played happily in the court below. The father was at work, and would not be back before evening.

When the neighbour, who with officiousness but much kindness had been going in and out of the room, saw that death was really close at hand, she bent over the woman, and asked her if she would not like to say good-bye to the little 'uns h'outside?

"No," replied the dying mother feebly; they were having a good time, and she would not disturb them.

Then, taking hold of the hands of Patty and Molly, she begged of them, not with her lips, but with her eyes, to take care of the baby.

She had no words left, poor dumb and dying soul! but her imploring eyes were eloquent.

A moment or two later, without a struggle, she bade good-bye to her work-a-day life for ever.

The sun, having fulfilled its mission, softly, glidingly, but surely, left the room, and the ten orphan children and the dead mother were alone. The seven who had played so unconsciously and merrily in the court had come in, and began, some of them to scramble on the bed, to peer at and touch the mother's cold cheek, others to kick each other, and scream and cry on the floor. Molly filled the kettle and made down the fire in case father should come home to tea, and Patty tried to soothe and nurse the new baby.

In these attempts she was unsuccessful, for although he had lain very quiet when the sun's rays had seemed to bless his little red face, he wailed and wailed now, and refused to be comforted.

The seven intermediate children were called Sally, Phil, Dick, Tom, Janey, Bill, and Joe. Getting tired at last of quarrelling and touching mother's dead cheek, they clustered round Patty, to examine and admire the new baby.

"'He's a queer 'un," said Dick, aged ten. "My h'eyes I look at 'is red 'air--he's a carrots, and no mistake."

"No, he ain't," said Tom; "he's a reg'lar tip-topper, _I_ say."

Tom's reason for this burst of admiration was in no way caused by his love for the baby, but from the desire, fostered by circumstances within him, to contradict and oppose Dick.

Presently one child began to pinch the new baby's toes, and another to try and pull him out of Patty's arms.

Patty, however, the motherly one of the family, sat firm.

"Stop that!" she said, administering a slap with right good-will and sure aim all round; then, when the storm of sobs and shrieks which this proceeding had called forth died away--

"Wot'll we call 'im? Timbs is 'is surname, safe enough, but he must 'ave a chrissen name, same as h'all of us."

"Mother used to give us our chrissen names," said little Janey in an awed voice, realising, for the first time as she spoke, that mother was really gone.

"Call 'im anythink," said Phil roughly. "Tom'll do fine; no, we 'ave a Tom; and Joe--wy, that 'ere young 'un's Joe. My h'eyes and stars! there ain't any name left fur the new baby; wot a lark!"

The children's imagination was not vivid, nor their vocabulary large; and the Joes, Toms, Dicks, and Phils being already used up, and held strenuously to by their owners, there seemed in truth no name left for the tenth baby.

Phil proposed that either Tom or Joe should resign theirs in favour of the new-comer. Tom and Joe refused to comply, on which occasion fresh quarrelling ensued.

"I have it," said Molly, clapping her hands: "there's the bird book."

Yes; they possessed one book, and Molly could read.

It was a book with coloured engravings of birds with gay plumage. Robin Red-breast graced the frontispiece. Need the children go any farther? The new baby was called Robin.