THE ESKIMO BABY 



bright little eyes that followed all my movements ; 

 but here was Abraha in bed in broad daylight, while 

 all the other boys and babies too, for that matter 

 were shouting and playing out of doors. I cast 

 about for a cause of the phenomenon. "Ah," I 

 thought, " Abraha's mother has an eye to her boy's 

 welfare after all : it is not all callousness ; she has 

 the mother's instinct to care for her children." 



Above the stove there stretched a string, and on 

 the string there hung a row of little boots and 

 trousers and shirt and dicky, sopping with moisture 

 and steaming in the warmth. So there was a limit 

 to the lengths to which the child might go un- 

 checked. " Yes," she said, " he has tumbled through 

 the ice and got wet through, and he must stay in 

 bed till his clothes are dry : I cannot let him have 

 his Sunday clothes, for he would spoil them 

 uivetokulluk " (the little rascal) this last with a 

 smile of real motherly pride at the restless little 

 fellow in the bed. " Aksunai, Abraha," I said ; and 

 Abraha turned his face away with a sheepish air, and 

 buried himself in the bedclothes. 



Many a time, as I have watched the children in 



the village, I have said to myself as this or the other 



little boy trotted past me, " How like his father he is 



growing!" It was partly face, for many Eskimo 



children are ridiculously like their parents in looks. 



Partly it was clothes, for the same hand (the 



| mother's) cuts and sews the clothing for the whole 



household, and often the clothes of the bigger ones 



! descend to the smaller ones in turn, so that from one 



I cause or another the peculiarities in the cut of the 



(father's clothes reappear in the rest of the family 



i wardrobe. Partly it is because the grown-up folks 



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