Explore "What Happened to Tad" by Mary E. Ropes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THE baby awoke after awhile, and cried a little, but Tad was too good and experienced a nurse not to have anticipated and arranged for what the child would want. He quickly produced from the basket the little one's feeding-bottle and some milk, and very soon the baby, quite satisfied and happy, was creeping about on the grass and playing with some flowers that Tad found for him. And when he wearied of this, the boy rocked him to sleep again in his arms.
Then, wearied by his own sleepless night, he lay down beside the child for a much-needed nap. His last feeling, before dropping into dreamland, being one of grim rejoicing in the recollection that his stepmother must already be in a "fine taking,"-as he would have expressed it,-about her baby. Tad had made up his mind not to carry the child back until dark, "for fear," he said to himself, "of being nabbed. " But already it was afternoon, and in these autumn days the darkness came early.