`` I 'll find out his address if I have to advertise in the papers for him , '' retorted Ma . `` As for you , Pa Sloane , you 're not fit to be out of a lunatic asylum . The next auction you 'll be buying a wife , I s ` pose ? '' Pa , quite crushed by Ma 's sarcasm , pulled his chair in to supper . Ma picked up the baby and sat down at the head of the table . Little Teddy laughed and pinched her face -- Ma 's face ! Ma looked very grim , but she fed him his supper as skilfully as if it had not been thirty years since she had done such a thing . But then , the woman who once learns the mother knack never forgets it . After tea Ma despatched Pa over to William Alexander 's to borrow a high chair . When Pa returned in the twilight , the baby was fenced in on the sofa again , and Ma was stepping briskly about the garret . She was bringing down the little cot bed her own boy had once occupied , and setting it up in their room for Teddy . Then she undressed the baby and rocked him to sleep , crooning an old lullaby over him . Pa Sloane sat quietly and listened , with very sweet memories of the long ago , when he and Ma had been young and proud , and the bewhiskered William Alexander had been a curly-headed little fellow like this one . Ma was not driven to advertising for Mrs. Garland 's brother . That personage saw the notice of his sister 's death in a home paper and wrote to the Carmody postmaster for full information . The letter was referred to Ma and Ma answered it . She wrote that they had taken in the baby , pending further arrangements , but had no intention of keeping it ; and she calmly demanded of its uncle what was to be done with it . Then she sealed and addressed the letter with an unfaltering hand ; but , when it was done , she looked across the table at Pa Sloane , who was sitting in the armchair with the baby on his knee . They were having a royal good time together . Pa had always been dreadfully foolish about babies .
He XXXXX ten years younger .
answered borrow demanded despatched forgets looked picked pinched taken undressed