Page:Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920).djvu/131

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE DREAM-CHILD
103

that belief. She slept that night with the baby on her arm, and in her sleep her face was the face of a girl in her youth, untroubled and unworn.

I expected that the morrow would bring some one seeking the baby. I had come to the conclusion that he must belong to the “Cove” across the harbor, where the fishing hamlet was; and all day, while Josie laughed and played with him, I waited and listened for the footsteps of those who would come seeking him. But they did not come. Day after day passed, and still they did not come.

I was in a maze of perplexity. What should I do? I shrank from the thought of the boy being taken away from us. Since we had found him the dream-child never had called. My wife seemed to have turned back from the dark borderland, where her feet had strayed, to walk again with me in our own homely paths. Day and night she was her old, bright self, happy and serene in the new motherhood that had come to her. The only thing strange in her was her calm acceptance of the event. She never wondered who or whose the child might be — never seemed to fear that he would be taken from her; and she gave him our dream-child’s name.

At last, when a full week had passed, I went, in my bewilderment, to our old doctor.

“A most extraordinary thing,” he said thoughtfully. “The child, as you say, must belong to