"That angel child with the heavenly voice—and no one to take him in?" Miss Wetherby bethought herself of her own airy rooms and flowering meadows, and snapped her lips together with sudden determination.
"I'll take him!" she announced tersely, and went home the next day to prepare for her expected guest.
Early in the morning of the first Monday in July, Miss Wetherby added the finishing touches to the dainty white bedroom upstairs.
"Dear little soul—I hope he'll like it!" she murmured, giving a loving pat to the spotless, beruffled pillow shams; then her approving eyes fell upon the "Morning Prayer" hanging at the foot of the bed. "There! them sweet little cherubs sayin' their prayers is jest the thing fur the little saint to see when he first wakes ev'ry mornin'. Little angel!" she finished softly.
On the table in the comer were hymn books, the great red-and-gold family Bible, and a "Baxter's Saint's Rest"—the only reading matter suited to Miss Wetherby's conception of the mind behind those soulful orbs upraised in devout adoration.
Just before Ann started for the station Tommy Green came over to leave his pet dog, Rover, for Miss Wetherby's "fresh-air" boy to play with.
"Now, Thomas Green," remonstrated Ann severely, "you can take that dirty dog right home. I won't have him around. Besides, Robert Sawyer ain't the kind of a boy you be. He don't care fur sech things—I know he don't."
Half an hour later, Ann Wetherby, her heart thumping loudly against her ribs, anxiously scanned the passengers as they alighted at Slocumville Station. There were not many—an old man, two girls, three or four women, and a small, dirty boy with a dirtier dog and a brown paper parcel in his arms.
He had not come!
Miss Wetherby held her breath and looked furtively at the small boy. There was nothing familiar in his appearance, she was thankful to say! He must be another one for somebody else. Still, perhaps he might know something about her own angel boy—she would ask.