irlhood's ready tears burning under her
drooping lids.

Persis' device had been eminently successful, entailing consequences,
indeed, she was far from anticipating. For Stanley Sinclair had waked
to the fact that he was the father of a beautiful girl on the verge of
womanhood, and his sense of parental responsibility, long before
drugged, manacled and locked into a dark cell, had roused at last and
was clamoring to be free from its prison. Annabel, his wife, had
recognized a possible rival in her own household. And lastly, Thad
West was the prey of an uneasy suspicion that perhaps, after all, the
mother of Diantha Sinclair had been making a fool of him.

CHAPTER VI

THE NEW ARRIVAL

Mindful of her promise to Mrs. Trotter, Persis had looked through her
piece-bag apparently with excellent results. For the little garments
symbolic of humanity's tenderest hopes, the garments that are to clothe
the unborn child, were growing rapidly under her skilful fingers.

The first slip had been severely plain, and then Persis, yielding to a
temptation most women will understand, began to fashion scraps of
embroidery and odds and ends of lace and insertion into tiny yokes and
bands. After many a long day's work she sat by the shaded lamp
finishing the diminutive garments with stitches worthy of a bridal
outfit.

"Who is it that's expecting?" Joel demanded one evening, his sex not
proving an impregnable armor against the assaults of curiosity.

The brevity of Persis' answer indicated reluctance to import the
desired information. "Mis' Trotter."

"Bartholomew Trotter's wife? And of course she's going to pay you for
all this fiddling and folderol."

Persis accepted the implied rebuke meekly. "I guess I'm paying myself
in the satisfaction I get out of it. I started in to stitch up some
slips on the machine, but I just couldn't stand it. Machine sewing's
all right for grown folks, but it does seem that when a little child's
getting ready to come into the world, there'd ought to be a needle
weaving back and forth, and tender thoughts and hopes weaving along
with it. And specially if a baby's going to be born into a home like
the Trotters', you can't grudge it a little bit of beauty to start out
with."

"Well, I must say it's lucky that so far you women have been kept where
you belong. Weaving hopes, indeed! As if 'twould make any difference
to that young one of Trotter's whether it was rigged out like a
millio