present conditions. If you want to keep that baby here you must
attend to it yourself."

"Me!" Rilla was dismayed into being ungrammatical. "Why--father--I--I
couldn't!"

"Younger girls than you have had to look after babies. My advice and
Susan's is at your disposal. If you cannot, then the baby must go back
to Meg Conover. Its lease of life will be short if it does for it is
evident that it is a delicate child and requires particular care. I
doubt if it would survive even if sent to an orphans' home. But I
cannot have your mother and Susan over-taxed."

The doctor walked out of the kitchen, looking very stern and immovable.
In his heart he knew quite well that the small inhabitant of the big
soup tureen would remain at Ingleside, but he meant to see if Rilla
could not be induced to rise to the occasion.

Rilla sat looking blankly at the baby. It was absurd to think she could
take care of it. But--that poor little, frail, dead mother who had
worried about it--that dreadful old Meg Conover.

"Susan, what must be done for a baby?" she asked dolefully.

"You must keep it warm and dry and wash it every day, and be sure the
water is neither too hot nor too cold, and feed it every two hours. If
it has colic, you put hot things on its stomach," said Susan, rather
feebly and flatly for her.

The baby began to cry again.

"It must be hungry--it has to be fed anyhow," said Rilla desperately.
"Tell me what to get for it, Susan, and I'll get it."

Under Susan's directions a ration of milk and water was prepared, and a
bottle obtained from the doctor's office. Then Rilla lifted the baby
out of the soup tureen and fed it. She brought down the old basket of
her own infancy from the attic and laid the now sleeping baby in it.
She put the soup tureen away in the pantry. Then she sat down to think
things over.

The result of her thinking things over was that she went to Susan when
the baby woke.

"I'm going to see what I can do, Susan. I can't let that poor little
thing go back to Mrs. Conover. Tell me how to wash and dress it."

Under Susan's supervision Rilla bathed the baby. Susan dared not help,
other than by suggestion, for the doctor was in the living-room and
might pop in at any moment. Susan had learned by experience that when
Dr. Blythe put his foot down and said a thing must be, that thing was.
Rilla set her teeth and went ahead. In the name of goodness, how many
wrinkles and kinks did a baby have? Why, there w