ome and look at it; but there was
no reply, only from below came up harsh sounds of children screaming
and angry women quarrelling. Oaths and threats and shrieks were all
the answer Meg's feeble cry received. She sat down again on her
mother's low chair before the fire, and made the baby comfortable on
her lap; while Robin stood at her knee, looking down pitifully at the
tiny, haggard, sleeping face, which Meg's little hand could almost
cover. What was she to do? There was no one in Angel Court whom she
dare call to her help. Baby might even die, like the greater number of
the babies born in that place, whose brief lives ended quickly, as if
existence was too terrible a thing in the midst of such din and
squalor. At the thought that perhaps baby was going to die, two or
three tears of extreme anguish rolled down little Meg's cheeks, and
fell upon baby's face; but she could not cry aloud, or weep many tears.
She felt herself falling into a stupor of grief and despair, when Robin
laid his hand upon her arm.

'Why don't you ask God to waken baby?' he asked.

'I don't know whether it 'ud be a good thing,' she answered. 'Mother
said she'd ask Him over and over again to let her take baby along with
her, and that 'ud be better than staying here. I wish we could all go
to heaven; only I don't know whatever father 'ud do if he come home and
found us all dead.'

'Maybe God'll take me and baby,' said Robbie thoughtfully, 'and leave
you to watch for father.'

'I only wish baby had called me Meg once afore she went,' cried little
Meg.

The baby stirred a little upon her knees, and stretched out its feeble
limbs, opening its blue eyes wide and looking up into her face with its
sweet smile of welcome. Then the eyelids closed again slowly, and the
small features put on a look of heavenly calm and rest. Meg and Robin
gazed at the change wonderingly without speaking; but when after a few
minutes Meg laid her hand gently upon the smooth little forehead, the
same chill struck to her heart as when she had touched her mother's
dead face.

It did not seem possible to little Meg that baby could really be dead.
She chafed its puny limbs, as she had seen her mother do, and walked up
and down the room singing to it, now loudly, now softly; but no change
came upon it, no warmth returned to its death-cold frame, no life to
its calm face. She laid it down at length upon the bed, and crossed
its thin wee arms upon its breast, and t