t it is you've got to say, can't you?"
burst out Hetty, impatiently. But Mrs. Little was not to be hurried.
Between her uneasiness at being face to face with Hetty, and her false
sense of embarrassment in speaking of the subject she had come to speak
of, it took her a long time to make Hetty understand that poor Sally,
finding that she was to be a mother again, had been afraid to tell Hetty
herself, and had taken this method of letting her know the fact.

Hetty listened breathlessly, her blue eyes opening wide, and her cheeks
growing red. She did not speak. Mrs. Little misinterpreted her silence.

"If you didn't want the baby here, I'd take it," she said almost
beseechingly, "if Sally'd let me: it would break Jim's heart if they
should have to leave here."

"Not want the baby!" shouted Hetty, in a voice which reached Sally in
the garden, and made her look up, thinking she was called. "I should
think you must be crazy, Mrs. Little;" and, with the involuntary words,
there entered for the first time into her mind a wonder whether Mrs.
Little's whole treatment of her son and his wife were not so monstrous
as to warrant a doubt as to her sanity. "Not want the baby! Why I'd give
half the farm to have a baby running about here. How could Sally help
knowing I'd be glad?" and Hetty moved swiftly towards the door, to go
and seek Sally. Recollecting herself suddenly, she turned, and, halting
on the threshold, said in her hardest tone:

"Is there any thing else you wish to say?" There was ignominious
dismissal in her tone, her look, her attitude; and Mrs. Little said
hastily:

"Oh, no, nothing, nothing! I only want to tell you that I'd like to
thank you, though, for all your kindness to Jim;" and Mrs. Little's lips
quivered, and the tears came into her eyes. Hetty was unmoved by them.

"I think more of Sally than I do of Jim," she said severely. "It's all
owing to Sally that he's got a chance to hold up his head again. Good
morning, Mrs. Little;" and Hetty walked out of one door, leaving her
guest to make her own way out of the other.

Sally found it hard to believe in Hetty's readiness to welcome her baby.

"Oh! you don't know, Hetty, how it will set everybody to talking again,"
said the poor girl. "You are so different from other folks. You can't
understand. I don't suppose my children ever would be allowed to play
with other children, do you?" she asked mournfully. "That was one thing
which comforted me when my baby died