had preceded it.

What followed convinced him that this was the case, though it also a
little favoured the other hypothesis of her selfish absorption in her
own people.

'Perhaps,' he said, 'you could look out some of those baby things
up-stairs if there are any left.'

'What? I beg your pardon, sir. What did you say?'

'Those baby clothes up-stairs that you gave to your sister's baby.'

'Those!' she said, with a strange light of indignation in her eyes,
more even than you would have expected in the most grasping and greedy
person on a proposal that something should be snatched from her hungry
maw and given to another. 'Those! Little Miss Edith's things! that
her own mother made and that I 've kept so careful all these years in
case Miss Edith's own should need them!'

You see she forgot in the excitement of the moment that these were the
very things she had been giving away so freely to that common little
child at Stokeley; but women are so inconsistent.

'Well?' he said, as her breath failed her in this unusual torrent of
remonstrance. 'Why not?'

'For a little gypsy child! a foundling that nobody knows anything
about! Don't do it, master, don't! I couldn't abear to see it. Here,
let me get a bit of print and flannel and run together a few things for
the child. I 'd rather do it a hundred times than that those things
should be given away--and just now too!'

It was very plain to Mr Robins that she did not know; but all the same
he was half inclined to point out that it was not a much more
outrageous thing to bestow these cherished garments on a foundling than
on her sister's baby; but she was evidently so unconscious of her
inconsistency in the matter that he did not know how to suggest it to
her.

'I 'm going into Stokeley to-morrow,' she went on, 'and if you liked I
could get some print and make it a few frocks. I saw some very neat at
fourpence three-farthings that would wash beautiful, and a good stout
flannel at elevenpence. Oh! not like that,' she said as he laid a
finger on some soft Saxony flannel with a pink edge which lay on the
table. 'Something more serviceable for a poor person's child.'

Well, perhaps it was better that Jane should not know who the baby was
of whom she spoke so contemptuously. A baby was none the better or
healthier for being dressed up in frills and lace; and Mrs Gray was a
thoroughly clean motherly woman, and would do well by the child.

All the same, when