has been called'---- she hesitated and glanced timidly at
him.

'Well?' he said encouragingly, 'what is the name?'

'Edith,' she answered, 'was one name.'

Pshaw! it was the baby at her sister's she was talking of all the time!
He turned irritably away.

'He can't bear to hear the name, even now; or, perhaps, he's cross at
being kept waiting for tea,' thought Jane Sands.

CHAPTER VI.

The Good Baby--Mr Robins Comes and Goes--A Secret Power--Mr Robins
Happy--A Naughty Tiresome Gal!--The Gypsy Child

As spring glided into summer, and June's long, bright, hay-scented days
passed by, followed by July, with its hot sun pouring down on the
ripening wheat and shaven hayfields, and on the trees, which had
settled down into the monotonous green of summer, the little,
brown-faced baby at the Grays' throve and flourished, and entwined
itself round the hearts of the kindly people in whose care Providence,
by the hands of the organist, had placed it. It grew close to them
like the branches of the Virginia creeper against a battered, ugly, old
wall, putting out those dainty little hands and fingers that cling so
close, not even the roughest wind or driving rain can tear them apart.
Gray, coming in dirty and tired in the evening, after a long day's work
in the hayfield or carting manure, was never too tired, nor for the
matter of that too dirty, to take the baby, and let it dab its fat
hands on his face, or claw at his grizzled whiskers or slobber
open-mouthed kisses on his cheeks.

Tom, who had bought a blue tie, let Zoe scrabble at that vivid article,
and pull the bit of southernwood out of his button-hole, and rumple his
well-oiled locks out of all symmetry; while Bill expended boundless
ingenuity and time in cutting whistles, and fashioning whirligigs,
which were summarily disposed of directly they got into the baby's
hands.

As for Mrs Gray, it is unnecessary to say that she was the most
complete slave of all Zoe's abject subjects, and the neighbours all
agreed that she was downright silly-like over that little, brown-faced
brat as was no better--no, nor nothing to hold a candle to my Johnnie,
or Dolly, or Bobby as the case might be.

An unprejudiced observer might have thought that Mrs Gray had some
reason for her high opinion of Zoe, for she was certainly a very much
prettier baby than the majority in Downside, who were generally of the
dumpling type, with two currants for eyes. And she was also a very