Janey and the Stork

by Inez Haynes Irwin

 

Janey and the Stork

by INEZ HAYNES GILLMORE Illustrations by Ada C. Williamson

THE sunlight poured through the sixteen-paned windows of the Blair dining-room. It oozed like a lustrous golden varnish along the side-board of ancient San Domingo mahogany. It filled the plates and platters of old Canton in the china-cabinet with pools of light. It turned the smoothly-laundered breakfast doilies into circles of silver. It twinkled in the coffee-silver. It sparkled in the finger-bowls. It brought out streaks of flaxen-gold in Janey Blair's straight hair, and revealed to the smallest pin-point dot the colony of freckles on her absurd little nose. Also it revealed the scowl of discontent on her forehead.

Of all times, it was hardest for Janey Blair to keep silent at breakfast. Floods of sun seemed to bring out in her floods of chatter. But she knew as well as she knew her name that the most tiny remarks would be met by the most gigantic of rebukes. For with the exception of Janey and Caroline everybody was opening mail.

Stout, grizzled, twinkling, his outing-shirt turned away in a broad V from his hairy chest, Mr. James Warriner, or Uncle Jim, the bachelor head of the house, sat at one end of the table. With the precision of a machine, he slit the flaps of the long business-like-looking envelopes, extracted, studied, crumpled and dropped their contents. Tall, slender, blonde, very fresh and womanly in her starched white morning dress, Mrs. Blair, his widowed sister, mother of Janey, presided at the head of the table behind a pile of correspondence of all shapes and colors. At Uncle Jim's right sat their cousin, Mrs. Benton, Aunt Marcia, mother of Caroline, a stout, dumpy little woman with a sallow look of lassitude. Only one letter lay at her plate. Beside her sat five-year old Caroline, roly-poly, tanned, whispering. Opposite, sat Janey.

Janey, who saw everything, noted that Uncle Jim's correspondence was all type-written. “Editors!” was her brief mental comment. She noticed that the pretty pages which came out of her mother's trim envelopes were covered with a billowy hand-writing through which, to Janey's great admiration, Mrs. Blair skimmed like a bird. “Ladies!” Janey said to herself. She noticed that Aunt Marcia's letter had a yellow stamp on it. “From Uncle Joe,” Janey conjectured. Uncle Joe, Janey knew, was away on a six months engineering job. Because, as Mrs. Blair had explained to Janey, Aunt Marcia was not well, the three older children had been sent to New Hampshire, and Aunt Marcia had come with little Caroline to spend the whole summer in Scarsett.

“Oh, Marcia!” Mrs. Blair exclaimed suddenly. “Do listen, Jim! Hilda Morris has just had another baby—a little girl. Oh, isn't it too lovely? Jim, you remember Hilda—she went to St. Agnes' with me.”

Jim did not display a glimmer of that enthusiasm with which every female at the table was immediately fired. “She's got six already, hasn't she?” he remarked in the tone of one who presents damaging evidence.

“Well—what's that got to do with it?” his sister asked in a nonplused tone.

“And Stuffy Morris gets only forty dollars a week,” Uncle Jim persisted, standing by his guns.

“Yes, but Hilda's tickled to death and so is Edward. Please don't call him Stuffy, Jim.”

Illustration: “I'd give anything I own if Janey had a little brother”

“I see I'm getting in bad,” Uncle Jim commented. “As mere man I really can't see how it's an occasion for fireworks, Miriam. It's their funeral, of course.”

“Now Jim,” his sister remonstrated, “You know you were perfectly crazy when Janey was born.”

“Sure! I was strong for Janey.” Mr. Warriner smiled across the table at his little niece. That young person was using an extraordinary feat in oatmeal-architecture as an excuse for dumping half a bowl of powdered sugar into her saucer. “I wouldn't sell Janey for ten million dollars but I'd sell her successor for ten cents.” Mr. Warriner's look became gloomily reminiscent. “Remember, Miriam, I used to walk the floor nights with her.”

Mrs. Blair's sense of humor did not cover the subject of babies. She frowned at the blasphemy. “I'd give anything I own,” she said, “if Janey had a little brother.”

Janey dropped the sugar bowl. Her mother's words flew like a flock of doves into her heart and nestled there cooing. A little brother! Somehow—she was not conscious of this herself—but that remark seemed to crystallize a great deal that was floating vague and dim in her mind. Ever since Aunt Marcia had come, she and mother had talked about nothing but babies, their care, their training, their inherent lovability. In another instant, Janey had made up her mind that she had been wanting a baby in the house ever since she could remember. A little brother! She and Caroline, left stranded on the shores of infancy by the older children of Scarsett, often ran out of schemes for entertainment. But with a baby in the house, one could dispense entirely with games. A little brother! And mother would like one just as much as she. How lucky! Janey's imagination suddenly soared into inter-stellar space. Janey's heart suddenly gave a great thump. Janey's active mind had suddenly said: “Why not?”

Absorbed in dazzling meditation, Janey docilely ate everything that was put before her.

Immediately after breakfast, she followed Mrs. Blair up to the sewing room: “Mother,” she said, “I have made up my mind that I would just love to have a little brother. Won't you please buy one for me. You can have all the money in my bank.”

“No, dear,” Mrs. Blair said. “I'm afraid I can't, so don't ask me again.”

Experience had taught Janey that mothers could be reasoned with. “Let me say just one thing more,” she pleaded. “Why not?”

“Because,” Mrs. Blair said. Her tone indicated that the conversation was at an end. But the mother of Janey had learned the utter futility of the “because'” answer as far as her daughter was concerned. “Little girls who haven't any fathers can't have any brothers and sisters,” she added.

This silenced Janey, but only for an instant. Then, “I should think if they didn't have any father, that would be all the more reason why they could have more brothers and sisters.”

Mrs. Blair had given up trying to cope with Janey's remorseless logic. “Well, I can't talk all the morning, Janey,” she said impatiently. “You can't have a little brother and that's all there is to it. Now run out and play”

But the seed of determination had been planted in Janey's mind. As ordered, she went out on to the piazza. She did not play. She sat down beside confiding little Caroline. For a long time she did not speak. She was thinking. Caroline kept silent too, for wonderful things always happened when Janey took to thought.

“Caroline,” Janey said after a long while, “do you know what we need in this house?”

“No,” Caroline replied placidly.

“We need a baby. What's more—we're going to have one. You've prob'ly noticed, Caroline Benton, that grown folks never 'tend to matters. That's why you don't get a lot of things you want. Now I'm going to 'tend to this myself. And you watch what happens, Caroline Benton. There'll be a baby in this house 'fore I get through. I know presackly where to go to ask for one. Do you know who brings the babies, Caroline? The doctor—in a green bag.”

Caroline demurred. “In kindergarten,” she said, “Wilthon thaid the sthork brought them.”

Janey shook a superior head, although inwardly she was reconciling conflicting theories. “Sometimes the stork does bring them, Caroline dear,” she admitted in her most saccharin tones of patronage. “And sometimes the doctor. Most genally the doctor. How I know is, Hazel Snow said Dr. Bigelow brought her cousin a baby. She saw him go into the house with a green bag. It was full of something. When he came out, there was nothing in it, but there was a baby lying beside her cousin in the bed. When the stork brings it, the doctor gives it to him. Now let's walk up the road till we meet Dr. Bigelow. He goes to see Grandpa Wade every morning since he cut his leg off.”

The two little girls trotted across the bridge and along the sliver of dusty road pulled taut and gray between stretches of emerald marsh. At the cross-roads they disappeared under a green Gothic arch made by meeting branches of huge old wine-glass elms. Came along presently a comfortable old buggy, filled with the comfortable bulk of a big middle-aged man. He was sitting back, half asleep, the reins caught in a hook on the buggy hood.

“Dr. Bigelow!” Janey called in her soft voice. “Dr. Bigelow! Oh please stop!”

“Whoa, Bess.” Dr. Bigelow caught the reins and peered over the wheel. “What's this—breakers on the lee bow? Oh, it's you Janey. What do you want? Here, wait a minute. Suppose you two young women come aboard. I'll take you for a little cruise. Look out for the larboard rein there, Janey.”

Dr. Bigelow helped them in. He deposited Caroline on the seat beside him and Janey on the floor between his knees, facing him. He hung up the reins. Old Bess jogged on.

“Now what is it, cap'n?” Dr. Bigelow asked.

Janey looked trustfully up into the snapping eyes. She liked Dr. Bigelow. Dr. Bigelow had followed the sea in his youth. He did not look like a doctor and he certainly did not talk like one. His short thick black beard was cut square; it was shaped like a dust-pan. His voice was always pretending to be gruff, and his blue eyes were always pretending to be stern; but neither voice nor eyes had ever deceived his most devoted follower, Miss Jane Elizabeth Blair. He had seen her through every terror of childhood from tummy-upset to measles. He mostly gave her nice medicines—sugary pills which came out of pretty, slender, thin-glassed bottles. After all the pills were taken, she could have the bottle. Surreptitiously, Janey was always swallowing extra doses that the bottle might empty quicker. Janey came straight to her point. “Dr. Bigelow, I want a little brother dreadfully. I've come to ask you to bring one to my mother.”

Dr. Bigelow seemed to think this a perfectly natural request. You might almost suppose that he had often met it before. His face screwed up into its most serious expression. But a twinkle in his eye, which even heavy iron-gray brows could not conceal, showed Janey that he was quite in sympathy with her.

“Well, cap'n,” he said in a regretful tone, “you've come at a bad time—a very bad time. I'm just out of babies. All gone except one little pickaninny. How about a black baby, Janey. Don't suppose it would do, would it?”

“Oh, Dr. Bigelow,” Janey said rapturously, “I'd love it, and so would Uncle Jim. He'd be just crazy about it. But mother would send it back the moment it came into the house. I know her.”

“That's what I was afraid of,” Dr. Bigelow said, and he seemed disappointed. “Brightest little black thing you ever saw.”

“When I grow up,” Janey said, “I'm not going to be fussy like my mother. I'm going to have a black baby and a Chinese baby and a Japanese baby and an Indian baby and an Eskimo baby—just like in 'Seven Little Sisters'—aren't you, Caroline?”

Illustration: The little wad of flesh before her became of all things the most desirable

“Yeth,” said Caroline, “and loths of twinths. Dr. Bigelow, where do you keep the babieth?”

“Caroline,” Dr. Bigelow answered impressively, “I can't possibly answer that question, for you see, if it got out where I kept the babies, little children would always be stealing them from me. I don't mean nice little girls like you two.” He looked hard at his small interlocutors and they managed to develop an expression of conscious rectitude. “Promise me if you ever happen to find out my hiding-place, you'll never tell it to a living soul. Cross your throats.”

Awed, the little girls performed this dreadful function.

“And where do you keep the sthork?” Caroline continued with undiminished curiosity.

“Oh it's this way about the stork,” Dr. Bigelow said carelessly. “I let him fly about loose. Now, when I am too busy to attend to the matter myself, I just whistle up Johnny—his name's Johnny, you know—tie a basket to his claw, put the baby in the basket and send Johnny off with it.”

Janey bounced. “Dr. Bigelow, you'll be getting some new babies in pretty soon, won't you? Will you please save one for us.”

Dr. Bigelow took from an inner pocket a narrow thin, red note-book. He poised a pencil over a blank page. “What kind of a baby do you want, Janey?” he said in a business-like tone.

“I want him to be a fat baby,” Janey answered immediately, “with curly golden hair—wouldn't you have it golden, Caroline?”

“And dimpleth in hith elbowth,” Caroline added.

“Fat boy baby,” Dr. Bigelow wrote, “golden curls, dimples in his elbows. All right. Next time a new cargo comes in, I'll be on the lookout. Here's Grandpa Wade's now. What do you suppose I'm bringing him?”

Neither Janey nor Caroline could guess.

“A nice new wooden leg. You two little ladies better disembark now and steer a straight course home.”

He helped the children out of the buggy, clucked to old Bess and resumed his half-asleep position. But in another instant, Janey came running alongside. “What is it now, cap'n?” Dr. Bigelow asked.

“Oh, Dr. Bigelow,” Janey panted, “don't have him too red, please. And please don't leave him to the stork. You bring him yourself. I feel you 're more—more—'sponsible.”

“All right, cap'n,” Dr. Bigelow said gravely.

Illustration: Dr. Bigelow caught the reins and peered over the wheel

For the next week, two better behaved little girls could not have been found in all Scarsett. Janey exhausted herself in preparations for the addition to the family. It was not a period of unmixed delight for elders, because the children stuck close to the house. They did not dare to leave for fear that in their absence Dr. Bigelow, carrying a bulging, squirming green bag, would drive up to the house. “Just think, Caroline, of not being here to thank him!” Janey said whenever temptation offered. By the sixth day the restraint was beginning to wear upon them.

Early Saturday morning, Janey went down to the beach to collect some shells and stones for her little brother. While she worked little Julia Riley came flying out of one of the mossers' cottages. “Oh, Janey, Janey, Janey,” she shrilled joyously, “I've got sumpin lovely to tell you.”

When. Janey reappeared at the Blair household, she looked quite a different child. Her eyes emitted sparks of wrath and her lips made two horizontal pink lines across the puffy indignation of her face: “Come Caroline,” she called. And Caroline knew by the tone that Janey was on the war-path. Wondering but dumb, Caroline ran to her side, seized her hand and pattered along— always a little in the rear of Janey's swift, determined stride. Janey made for the village. The buggy was standing at the Bigelow gate. Dr. Bigelow, just emerging from the house, seemed to recall something, turned and started back.

“Dr. Bigelow,” Janey called.

The doctor swung about. “Oh, hullo, cap'n!” he said absently.

Janey planted herself solidly on the gravel walk. She talked with considerable precision, and in one breath delivered the following:

“Dr. Bigelow, I think you are the horridest, hatefulest, meanest doctor I ever knew in my life. You promised me that you'd bring me a baby brother. And I've waited a whole week for him to come. And this morning, Julia Riley told me that last night you brought her mother two whole babies. And I asked Julia partickly and she said they were boys. And she said they had golden hair. And you know just as well as anything that Mrs. Riley doesn't need any babies. She's got six children already. And little Mike's still a baby. And I shall never trust you again. And I want you to distinkly understand that when I'm sick I'm never going to have you again. Not even if I'm dying. I'll scrooch right down in the bed and shut my mouth tight and if you make me take any medicine I shall spit it right out. I shall tell my mother to have Dr. Robinson. Because I don't believe he'd tell me he'd bring me a brother and then go and give two away to people that don't need them.

She turned and pulling the sympathetic Caroline along, made rapidly back up the street.

Dr. Bigelow listened to this address, wordless. At its close, he went into the house. He, going one way and Janey going another, presented a study in backs—his, shaking, as with a terrific inner convulsion, Janey's rigid as if it were in a plaster cast.

Scarsett village was small and news scarce. The story of Dr. Bigelow's dismissal must have gained wide circulation. For a week after, grown people were stopping Janey to consult her gravely about Dr. Bigelow's professional standing.

“He's very good,” Janey said always, a steely glitter in her gray eyes, “for some things.” But she could not be made to commit herself further.

With Janey, however, opposition was the best fuel to determination. That night, in the lovely, dark, dozy time between hopping into bed and falling into slumber, she thought out a new plan. Medicine had failed her. She would turn to religion.

During the summer months, Janey always attended the Sunday-school of the Episcopal church in Scarsett. The Reverend Silas Lawton, its pastor, governed his tiny parish with a gentle, lovable inefficiency. He was a tall, lean, scholarly-looking gentleman whose long, wavy hair always left a faint shower of dandruff on his shiny shoulders. He was as strong a friend as Janey had in all Scarsett. Their friendship grew out of a tete-a-tete.

Once, running over to the village on an errand, Janey had descried the Reverend Silas ahead, caught up with him, slipped her warm little hand in his, proceeded to make conversation.

“Mr. Lawton,” she said, “I know how you could have a lot more children coming to your Sunday-school if you want them.”

“Do you indeed, Janey,” her companion said pleasantly, “How's that?”

“Well, I found out what children like in Sunday-school last fall. You know mother went away for two months to Florida and I staid with Cousin Margaret in Brookline. I didn't like 'Piscopal Sunday-school because it wasn't any fun. And so every Sunday I went to a different Sunday-school to find out which I'd like best. I went to the Baptist and the Methodist and the Orthodox and the Swedenborgian and the Unitarian—it was dreadful hard learning to pronounce the names. And where do you suppose they had the most children?”

By this time, Mr. Lawton was regarding his young friend with considerable amusement. “I haven't the remotest idea, Janey. Which was it?”

“The Unitarian,” Janey said, “and I'll tell you why. They gave us crayons and let us color a Bible picture every Sunday. My Adam-and-Eve-in-the-Garden-of-Eden wasn't so good because they hadn't enough clothes on to do anything with. Oh, but Mr. Lawton, if you could have only seen my Joseph's-coat-of-many-colors. It was the most bee-you-tifullist picture I 'bout ever saw. Joseph looked like people at the Hippodrome that Uncle Jim took me to once. But mother would not save it. She burned it up. Oh, how I did like that Sunday-school. I went all the time mother was gone. She was mad when she came home, and made me go to the 'Piscopal again. There were a great many more children at the Unitarian—and I think it was the crayons.”

What Mr. Lawton thought of this gratuitous advice is not a part of this story. But by a curious coincidence, crayon-drawing was instituted in his Sunday-school within a month.

This morning when Janey called, he took her in his lap at once. “Well,” he said jocularly, “isn't the church being run to suit you yet. I guess I'll have to send you to the bishop.”

“Oh Mr. Lawton,” Janey said in great distress, “of course it is! I just love Sunday-school now. I've come to ask a favor of you. Will you pray for me to have a little brother?”

Mr. Lawton's manner did not flame with the immediate response which Janey expected. In fact, he bit his lip, looked down, fiddled with his watch-chain, gave every appearance of a man in a puzzled frame of mind.

“Marilla,” he called helplessly at last.

Mrs. Lawton came in from the other room. She was a big middle-aged woman with a helpless look of majesty. She had a mole on her chin. She wore her brown hair parted in the middle and smoothed down over her ears, and she always dressed in black silk. The brooch which confined her neck-ruche held the painted portrait of a little girl.

“Janey's called to ask me to pray for her to have a little brother,” Mr. Lawton explained.

Janey had no idea that Mrs. Lawton could be so sympathetic. “The lamb!” she exclaimed and she lifted Janey on her lap. “Don't you remember, Si, how Lily used to pray for a little brother.”

Janey knew who Lily was. The Lawton's only child. Lily had died at twelve. It was her picture in the brooch. Every child in Scarsett had heard of Lily Lawton's angelic goodness.

“Did she get one?” Janey asked.

“No, dear,” Mrs. Lawton said with a sigh.

“I didn't know that good little girls ever prayed for things without getting them,” Janey said in a disillusioned tone. “But perhaps if she had asked you to pray too. Will you please pray for me?”

The Reverend Silas turned to his books with the air of a man who leaves a woman's work to the women. For a moment, Mrs. Lawton looked nonplussed. Then her face lighted up as if a wonderful idea had occurred to her. “Why of course we will, Janey dear. We'll pray every night for a little baby to come to your house.”

Janey sighed a long sigh of relief. “Oh thank you so much,” she breathed.

But Janey was nothing if not thorough. Whatever her game, she never failed to use all its possibilities, and she left nothing to chance.

Returning home from her call on the Lawtons, she met Mr. Lucas and Miss Dale. Mr. Lucas was a very young man who, by a mysterious process of graduation, would become a clergyman in a year. Miss Dale was a very young lady who, by a process equally mysterious, was to become Mrs. Lucas immediately after this event. Janey thought them the two prettiest people she knew. Mr. Lucas looked like a statue. When he played tennis, his wavy brown hair blew in all directions from his face. Miss Dale resembled the pictures in magazines which Janey cut out for young-lady dolls. Her gray eyes were just like soft lamps hung in her face, although people said that that face was a little too pale for perfect health.

Janey stopped them.

“Mr. Lucas,” she said. She trembled a little for she did not know him half so well as Mr. Lawton, “Would you do a great favor for me as long as you're going to be a minister pretty soon?”

Mr. Lucas's brown eyes surveyed her in some curiosity, a little amusement and a great deal of embarrassment.

“Of course, Janey. What is it?”

“Won't you please pray for me to have a little brother? Most every little girl I know has one and some little girls keep having them all the time. My little cousin Caroline has two brothers and a sister. I want a little brother more than anything in the world. And you pray too, Miss Dale,” Janey concluded. For it seemed discourteous to leave her out.

Miss Dale was carrying a big bunch of wild roses. Janey observed that her cheeks suddenly showed a color their exact counterpart. Mr. Lucas just stood and looked at her as if he had forgotten how to talk, but Miss Dale plumped down to her knees on the grassy roadside. She hugged Janey and kissed her again and again. “Oh you dear, darling little duck you! Of course we will!” As she passed on with Mr. Lucas, Janey heard her say, “Edmund, I do hope that there's an angel somewhere in heaven who does nothing all day long but listen to the prayers of very little children.”

As for Janey, she went to bed that night in a state of perfect contentment. With religion doubly enlisted on her side, she could snap her fingers at medicine. She arose the next morning, confident, care-free, proud. The aroma of this certainty spread over an entire week. In fact, ten days had gone by before Janey began to wonder why such systematic work produced no results. In a day or two doubt piled on uncertainty until Janey was visibly cross.

“We've got to try something else, Caroline,” she said.

But it was one thing to say “try something else.” It was another to find it. Janey racked her brain in vain. And then suddenly when they were in bathing, Pink Hollis opened the vista to a new possibility.

“Where do you suppose I'm going to-morrow?” she said jubilantly. “Over to Brockton to see my Aunt Cad's new baby. Jessie and Ethel were down over Sunday and they said she's the darlingest little thing. They told me all about how they came to have her. They begged and begged their mother to get them a little sister. She paid no attention to them for a long time and then one day she told them to put sugar outside the window and maybe if the stork happened to be flying by, he'd stop to eat the sugar and then they could take the baby from the basket. So every night they put two lumps of sugar outside the window. And their mother kept saying to them, 'You keep your eyes wide open to catch the stork, for he'll come when you least expect it.' And they did. And one day their father asked them if they'd like to go to Boston to spend the day and go to Keith's. And they said they would. So they went with Mrs. Burton next door. And when they came back, what do you think?”

Pink's voice sank. Janey's and Caroline's eyes nearly popped out of their heads. They could not speak.

“The stork had come,” Pink said, “and left a little girl baby. And after they'd kissed her, Jessie went up to her room. And the sugar was gone.”

Pink plunged into the surf. Janey clasped Caroline's hand tight and the two little girls ran home as fast as they could go. And running they trod clouds of glory.

A week of rain followed. “Gracious?” Mrs. Blair said once. “I never saw anything like the way the loaf sugar disappears in this house. I would suspect the children if they 'd ever cared for it before. I declare I think Hattie eats it.”

In other ways it was not a week of unalloyed delight. In the first place, Mrs. Benton was weak and ailing and the children were forbidden any noisy play. Dr. Bigelow, running the gauntlet of Janey's stony glare, came every day. The rain did not permit them to go out-doors, but as far as childhood permits pre-occupation, Janey lived in another world. She had played her trump-card and she knew that it would not fail.

Mrs. Blair's chamber adjoined Mrs. Benton's and the big center dormer window was divided between the two rooms. Every night Janey looked out of her window and every night Caroline looked out of hers. Their faces almost touched over a crumbling mound of sugar, half-way between.

After a while the rain ceased. A week of dazzling sunshine baked the cliffs bone-dry, sweetened the air as if with honey, melted the gray cold ocean until it boiled sapphire.

“How would you and Caroline like to go on a picnic to-day,” Mrs. Blair asked one morning.

“We'd love it,” Janey answered promptly.

“I've just called up Mrs. Snow and she says that you and Caroline and Hazel can go on a picnic in the pine woods back of their barn. Now remember, children, you are not to go off the Snow place. Here are two lunches. You can eat one the moment you get there. You must save the other until noon. And don't start home until I telephone you, for I may decide to let you stay there all night.”

Janey had never seen her mother so flustered. She seemed anxious to get the children out of the house. She kissed them both, but to Janey's bewilderment, just before they were leaving, she seized little Caroline and kissed her again and again.

Such a day they had in the pine grove! As Mrs. Blair had foreseen, they ate their first lunch immediately on arrival—at fifteen minutes after nine. Then they played for three hours with acorn cups and pine-cones, wandered afield, gathered flowers, ate their second lunch and spent the afternoon in the big shadowy Snow barn.

About five, Mrs. Snow appeared. “Your mother's just called up, Janey,” she said, “and you're to go home at once.” Mrs. Snow seemed excited too. She kissed both the children but she hugged Caroline much longer than Janey.

It was a disappointment to go, but the two children obediently trotted down the road which lead marshwards and seawards, and cliffwards—home.

Mrs. Blair was standing where the drive curved into the road. “What do you suppose has happened while you've been gone, children?” she said, seizing them both by the hand. “The stork has been here and left the darlingest baby-boy.”

Caroline and Janey exchanged one stunned look. Then they jumped up and down like a pair of mad little tops. “Oh, goody, goody, goody,” Janey said. “I knew I'd do it. I always do what I make up my mind to do.” Then she sighed, “I guess they always manage to come when you've not at home though. Oh, show it to us mother,” she entreated.

“If you'll be as quiet as mice,” Mrs. Blair agreed. “You must not say a word and you must walk on tip-toes.”

A pair of teetering shadows, the children followed her into the house and upstairs into the room which led from Mrs. Benton's chamber. There a strange woman in a gingham dress and a white cap, sat beside the old wooden Blair cradle. The strange woman smiled and drew down the clothes from under the hood.

Janey was conscious, one instant, of acute disappointment. Brother's face was not red, it was purple. He was crumply as to skin and quite hairless. By some curious vagary of the child-mind, Janey had expected that he would make his first appearance in a navy-blue sailor-suit trimmed profusely with brass buttons. For an instant, the tantalizing vision of a fat, dimpled, golden-haired cherub floated in her mind. Then it disappeared forever and the little wad of flesh before her became of all human things, the most desirable.

“You may touch your little brother's hand, Caroline, if you want to,” Mrs. Blair said indulgently.

Caroline's brother! Just in time, Mrs. Blair caught Janey by the shoulders for there was whirlwind in her face. Her hand over her child's mouth, Mrs. Blair hustled her into her own room. “Janey, if you cry when Aunt Marcia is so sick, I'll spank you,” she threatened sternly.

“I'm not going to cry, mother,” Janey gasped heroically, pounding her face among the pillows and then coming up for air. “But, oh, I could skriek!” Even in that tumultuous moment, Mrs. Blair perceived that her daughter had blended 'screech' with 'shriek.' “For, mother, I made a dreadful mistake. I put the sugar between the two windows and the stork went in the wrong dormer. That baby-brother really belongs to me.”