Zoe seemed well content with her new nurse, and left off crying, and sat blinking gravely at the fire, which Bill, much relieved at having something definite to do, soon roused up to a sparkling, crackling blaze with some dry sticks; while Mr Robins warmed her small, pink feet.

Bill would certainly have been surprised if he could have seen what was pa.s.sing in the organist's mind, a proposal ripening into a firm resolve that he would take the child home that very night and tell Jane who she was. Let the village talk as it might, he did not mind; let them say what they pleased.

He knew enough of village reports to guess that Gray was not as badly hurt as every one declared; but still, even a trifling accident meant, at any rate, a week or two of very short commons at the cottage, perhaps less milk for the baby, or economy over fuel, and the September days were growing cold and raw, and there had been more than one frost in the mornings, and the baby's little toes were cold to his warm hand.

Mrs Gray, too, would be occupied and taken up with her husband, and little Zoe would be pushed about from one to another, and he had heard that there was scarlatina about, and the relieving officer had been telling him that very morning how careless the people were about infection.

The cottage looked quite different in the blazing firelight, and Bill, encouraged by the organist's presence, tidied up the place, where the washtub stood just as Mrs Gray had left it; and he set the kettle on to boil, so that when Mrs Gray and Tom came in it presented quite a comfortable appearance.

Mrs Gray came in tired and tearful, but decidedly hopeful, having left Gray comfortably in bed with his leg set, and having received rea.s.suring opinions from nurse and doctor: and the first alarm and apprehension being removed, there was a certain feeling of importance in her position as wife of the injured man, and excitement at a visit to the country town, both ways in a cart, which does not happen often in a life-time.

The baby, thanks to the warmth and Mr Robins's nursing, had fallen asleep in his arms. Mrs Gray was so much confused and bewildered by the events of the day, that she would hardly have been surprised to see the Queen with the crown on her head sitting there in the master's arm-chair, quite at home like, and holding the baby on one arm and the sceptre on the other; and Tom was of too phlegmatic a disposition to be surprised at anything. So they made no remark, and Mr Robins laid the baby, still asleep, in Bill's arms, and went away.

Such a beautiful, quiet September night, with great, soft stars overhead, and the scent of fallen leaves in the air; the path beneath his feet was soft with them, and as he pa.s.sed under the elms which by daylight were a blaze of sunny gold, some leaves dropped gently on his head.

'To-morrow,' he said, 'I will bring little Zoe home, and I will let her mother--I will let Edith know that the child is with me, and that if she likes'---- It needed but a word, he felt sure, to bring the mother to the baby, the daughter to her father.

He stood for a moment by the church-yard gate, close to the spot where that bitter, cruel parting had been, and fancied what the meeting would be. After all, what was his feeling for little Zoe, and his imagination of what his little grandchild would be to him in the future, to the delight of having Edith's arms round his neck and holding her to his heart once more?

'Edith,' he whispered softly, as he turned away; 'Edith, come home!'

'I wonder,' he said to Jane Sands that night; 'I wonder if you could find out an address for me?'

She was folding up the tablecloth, and she stopped with a puzzled look.

'An address? Whose?'

'Well,' he said, without looking at her, 'I fancy there are still some of the Blakes, (the word came out with a certain effort) 'living at Bilton, and perhaps you could find out from them the address I want; or, perhaps,' he added quickly, for she understood now, and eager words were on her lips, 'perhaps you know. There! never mind now; if you know, you can tell me to-morrow.'

CHAPTER VIII.

Preparation--The Room Furnished--Mrs Gray at Work--The Baby Gone--The Gypsy Mother--The Gypsy's Story--A Foolish Fancy--Something Has Happened--The Real Baby

Morning very often brings other counsels, but this was not the case with Mr Robins, for when he got up next day he was more than ever resolved to carry out his intention of bringing little Zoe home, and letting her mother know that a welcome awaited her in her old home.

He had not slept very much during the night, for his mind had been too full of the change that was coming in his life, and of the difference that the presence of Edith and little Zoe would make in the dull, old house. Sad and worn and altered, was she! Ah! that would soon pa.s.s away with kindness and care and happiness, and the cough that had sounded so hollow and ominous should be nursed away, and Edith should be a girl again, a girl as she ought to be yet by right of her years; and those five years of suffering and estrangement should be altogether forgotten as if they had never been.

He went into the bedroom next his, that had been Edith's--that was to be Edith's again--and, looking round it, noticed with satisfaction that Jane had kept it just as it had been in the old days; and he pushed the bed a little to one side to make room for a cot to stand beside it, a cot which he remembered in the night as having stood for years in the lumber-room up in the roof, and which he now with much difficulty dragged out from behind some heavy boxes, and fitted together, wishing there had been time to give it a coat of paint, and yet glad, with a tremulous sort of gladness, that there was not, seeing that it would be wanted that very night.

And just then Jane Sands came up to call him to breakfast, and stood looking from the cot to her master's dusty coat, with such a look of delighted comprehension on her face, that the organist felt that no words were needed to prepare her for what was going to happen.

'I thought,' he said, 'it had better be brought down.'

'Where shall it go?' she asked.

'In Miss----in the room next mine,' he said, 'and it will want a good airing.'

'Shall I make up the bed too?' she asked.

'Yes, you may as well.'

'Oh, master,' she said, the tears shaking in her voice and shining in her eyes; 'will they be wanted soon? Will they, maybe, be wanted to-night?'

His own voice felt suspiciously shaky; his own eyes could not see the old cot, nor Jane's beaming face quite plainly, so he only gave a gruff a.s.sent and turned away.

'What a good, kind creature she is!' he thought. 'What a welcome she will give Edith and Edith's little Zoe!'

During the morning he heard her up in the room sweeping and scrubbing, as if for these five years it had been left a prey to dust and dirt; and when he went out after dinner to give a lesson at Bilton, she was still at it with an energy worthy of a woman, half her age.

That stupid little girl at Bilton, who generally found her music-lesson such an intolerable weariness to the flesh, and was conscious that it was no less so to her teacher, found the half-hour to-day quite pleasant. Mr Robins had never been so kind and cheerful, quite amusing, laughing at her mistakes, and allowing her to play just the things she knew best, and to get up in the middle of the lesson to go to the window and see a long procession of gypsy vans going by to Smithurst fair.

It was such a very beautiful day; perhaps it was this that produced such a good effect on the organist's temper. There had been a frost that morning, but it was not enough to strip the trees, but only to turn the elms a richer gold, and the beeches a warmer red, and the oaks a ruddier brown; while in the hedges the purple dogwood, and hawthorn, and bramble leaves made a wonderful variety of rich tints in the full bright sunshine, which set the birds twittering with a momentary delusion that it might be spring.

He did not come back over the hill, and past the Grays' cottage, for he was going to fetch the child that evening; but he came home by the road, meeting many more of those gypsy vans which had distracted his pupil's attention, and looking with kindliness on the swarthy men and bronze dark-eyed women, for the sake of little Zoe, who had been so often called the gypsy baby.

When he reached home he found the room prepared with all the care Jane Sands could lavish. He had thought when he went in that morning that it was just as Edith had left it, and all in the most perfect order; but now the room was a bower of daintiness and cleanliness, and all Edith's old treasures had been set out in the very order she used to arrange them--why! even her brush and comb were laid ready on the dressing-table, and a pair of slippers by the bedside, and a small bunch of autumn anemones and Czar violets was placed in a little gla.s.s beside her books. He smiled, but with tears in his eyes, as he saw all these loving preparations.

'Edith can hardly be here to-night,' he said to himself, 'but Zoe will.' And he smoothed the pillow of the cot close to the bedside, and drew the curtain more closely over its head.

He found his tea set ready for him when he came down, but Jane Sands had gone out, and he was rather glad of it, as she had watched him that morning with an eager expectant eye, and he did not know what to say to her. It would be easier when he brought the baby and actually put it into her arms.

The sun had set when he had finished tea, a blaze of splendour settling down into dull purple and dead orange, leaving a stripe of pale-green sky over the horizon, flecked with a few soft brown clouds tinged with red.

But envious night hastened to cover up and deaden the colours of the sky, and the almost equally gorgeous tints of tree and hedge; and, by the time Mr Robins reached the Grays' cottage, darkness had settled down as deep as on that evening four months ago, when he carried the baby and left it there.

Now, as then, the cottage door was open, and Mrs Gray sat at work with the candle close to her elbow, every now and then giving a long sniff or a sigh, that made the tallow candle flicker and tremble. He had almost forgotten her husband's accident in his absorption in the baby; but these sniffs recalled it to his mind, and he thought he would give them a helping hand while Gray was in the hospital.

'She has been kind to my little Zoe,' he thought, 'and I will not forget it in a hurry. She shall come and see the child whenever she likes; and Edith will be good to her, for she has been like a mother to the baby all these months.'

Close by where Mrs Gray sat he could see the foot of the old cradle and the rocker within reach of the woman's foot; but Zoe must be asleep, for there was no rocking necessary, and Mrs Gray did not turn from her work to look at the child, though she stopped from time to time to wipe her eyes on her ap.r.o.n.

'She is taken up with her husband,' he said to himself; 'it is as well that I am going to take the child away, as she will have no thought to give her now.'

And then he went into the cottage, with a tap on the open door to announce his presence.

'Good evening, Mrs Gray,' he said in a subdued voice, so as not to wake the baby. But he might have spared himself this precaution, for the next glance showed him that the cradle was empty.

'Bless you, Mr Robins,' the woman said, 'you give me quite a start, coming in so quiet like. But, there! I 'm all of a tremble, the leastest thing do terrify me. You might knock me down with a feather.

First one thing and then another! The master yesterday and the baby to-day!'

'What!' he said, so sharp and sudden, that it stopped the flow of words for a moment. 'What do you mean! Is the baby in bed up-stairs?

What's the matter? It's not the scarlatina? Not'----

'Bless you!' she said, 'why I thought you'd a-knowed. It ain't the scarlatina; the baby was as well and bonnie as ever when she went. She 've agone! her mother come and fetch her this very day, and took her right off. Ay! but she were pleased to see how the little thing had got on, and she said as she 'd never forget my kindness, and how she'd bring her to see me whenever she come this way. But, there! I do miss her terrible. Why, it's 'most worse than the master himself.'