eturn.
Four weeks she had been at the Pequot House in New London, occupying a
little cottage and luxuriating in the joy of having her child with her
almost every day. Country air and country nursing had wrought wonders in
the baby, which had grown so beautiful and bright that it was no longer
in Wilford's way save as it took too much of Katy's time, and made her
careless for the gay crowd at the hotel.

Marian was working at her trade, and never came to the hotel except one
day when Wilford was in New York, but that day sufficed for Katy to know
that after herself it was Marian whom baby loved the best--Marian, who
cared for it even more than Mrs. Hubbell. And Katy was glad to have it
so, especially after Wilford and his mother decided that she must leave
the child in New London while she made the visit to Silverton.

Wilford did not like her taking so much care of it as she was inclined
to do. It had grown too heavy for her to lift; it was better with Mrs.
Hubbell, he said, and so to the inmates of the farmhouse Katy wrote that
baby was not coming.

They were bitterly disappointed, for Katy's baby had been anticipated
quite as much as Katy herself, Aunt Betsy bringing from the woodshed
chamber a cradle which nearly forty years before had rocked the deacon's
only child, the little boy, who died just as he had learned to lisp his
mother's name. As a momento of those days the cradle had been kept, Katy
using it sometimes for her kittens and her dolls, until she grew too old
for that, when it was put away beneath the eaves whence Aunt Betsy
dragged it, scouring it with soap and sand, until it was white as snow.
But it would not be needed, and with a sigh the old lady carried it
back, thinking "things had come to a pretty pass when a woman who could
dance and carouse till twelve o'clock at night was too weakly to take
care of her child," and feeling a very little awe of Katy who must have
grown so fine a lady.

But all this passed away as the time drew near when Katy was to come,
and no one seemed happier than Aunt Betsy on the morning when Whitey was
eating his oats, and the carriage stood on the greensward. The sky above
and the earth beneath were much as they were that other day when they
were expecting Katy, but Helen's face was not as bright, or her steps as
buoyant. She could not forget who was there one year ago, and all the
morning painful memories had been tugging at her heart as she remembered
the past, and wo