Mary Alfrick smiled. "You've got something else to think about," she said in a low voice. "I've been keeping your mother company."
"'Twas good of you," John muttered.
Mary came a step nearer, and they all three gazed with deep interest at the little creature on John's knee. She sat upright, staring from one woman to the other—Mrs. Randal's worn face and spectacles, the grave yet attractive look of Mary's earnest eyes. The shawl had fallen back from her little white flannel dress, her fair curls were ruffled, the small face and hands and feet were stained with mud and rain. Round her neck hung a tiny gold locket on a piece of discoloured blue ribbon.
"I'll tell you what, John, my dear," said Mrs. Randal, peering through her spectacles, "this is no poor person's child. There's something wrong behind all this. Why"—laying her hand on Lily's frock—"this here flannel cost ever so much a yard—didn't it, Polly? And look! what's that round her neck? Where did you say you found her?"
John repeated his story. "But that wasn't the first time I'd seen her," he said. "I travelled to Moreton Road with her and her mother on the railway."
"You came by the railway, John! Well, and what was her mother like?"
"She didn't look good for much," John slowly confessed. "But she told me out of her own mouth that it was her youngest, and she'd had nine, and her husband out o' work, and she in the hospital with a broken leg, and they were going to her mother at Fiddler's Green."
Mrs. Randal looked wonderingly over her spectacles.
"I doubt she was taking you in, John," she murmured thoughtfully.
"Well, anyhow, she's a sweet child," said John, "and her name's Lily."