e. Oh, my, how my legs do ache; that moor is
heavy walking! Give me the baby, please, Miss Flower. It ain't your
baby, it's Miss Polly's."

"So, you're Maggie?" said Flower. There was a queer shake in her voice.
"It was about you I was so angry. Yes, you may look at the baby; take it
and look at it, but I don't want to see it, not if it's dead."

Maggie instantly lifted the little white bundle into her arms, removed a
portion of the shawl, and pressed her cheek against the cheek of the
baby.

The little white cheek was cold, but not deadly cold, and some faint,
faint breath still came from the slightly parted lips.

When Maggie had anything to do, no one could be less nervous and more
practical.

"The baby ain't dead at all," she explained. "She's took with a chill,
and she's very bad, but she ain't dead. Mother has had heaps of babies,
and I know what to do. Little Miss Pearl must have a hot bath this
minute."

"Oh, Maggie," said Flower. "Oh, Maggie, Maggie!"

Her frozen indifference, her apathy, had departed. She rose from her
recumbent position, pushed back her hair and stood beside the other
young girl, with eyes that glowed, and yet brimmed over with tears.

"Oh, what a load you have taken off my heart!" she exclaimed. "Oh, what
a darling you are! Kiss me, Maggie, kiss me, dear, dear Maggie."

"All right, Miss. You was angry with me afore, and now you're a-hugging
of me, and I don't see no more sense in one than t'other. Ef you'll hold
the baby up warm to you, Miss, and breathe ag'in her cheek werry
gentle-like, you'll be a-doing more good than a-kissing of me. I must
find sticks, and I must light up a fire, and I must do it this minute,
or we won't have no baby to talk about, nor fuss over."

Maggie's rough and practical words were perhaps the best possible tonic
for Flower at this moment. She had been on the verge of a fit of
hysterics, which might have been as terrible in its consequences as
either her passion or her despair. Now trembling slightly, she sat down
on the little stool which Maggie had pulled forward for her, took the
baby in her arms, and partly opening the shawl which covered it,
breathed on its white face.

The little one certainly was alive, and when Flower's breath warmed it,
its own breathing became stronger.

Meanwhile, Maggie bustled about. The hermit's hut, now that she had
something to do in it, seemed no longer at all terrible. After a good
search round she found some stick