She had evidently been crying, and was altogether in a nervous and upset condition. She forgot half the things he wanted at supper, and her hand trembled so that she nearly overturned the lamp. More than once she stopped and looked at him as if she were nerving herself to speak, and he knew quite well the question that was trembling on her lips. 'Where is the child? Master, where is the child?' But he would not help her in any way, and he quite ignored the agitation that was only too evident; and even when he went into the kitchen to fetch his pipe, and found her with her face buried in her arms on the kitchen table, shaking with irrepressible sobs, he retreated softly into the passage and called to her to bring the pipe, and when, after a long delay, she brought it in, he was apparently absorbed in his paper, and took no notice of her tear-stained face and quivering lips.
He heard her stirring far into the night, and once she went into the little room next his that used to be his daughter's, and which no one had used since she left, and in the silence of the night again he could hear heartbreaking sobs half-stifled.
'Poor soul! poor soul!' he said to himself. 'She's a good creature is Jane, and no doubt she's bitterly disappointed. I 'll make it up to her somehow. She's a faithful, good soul!'
He was restless and uncomfortable himself, and he told himself he had taken cold and was a bit feverish. It was feverish fancy, no doubt, that made him think the hollow where the child's light weight had rested was still perceptible, but this fancy outlasted the fever of that night and the cold that caused it, for there was hardly a night afterwards when Mr Robins did not detect its presence, even with all Jane Sands' thorough shaking of the feather-bed and careful spreading of sheets and blankets. If he dropped asleep for a minute that night the child was in his arms again, heavy as lead, weighing him down, down, down, into some unfathomable gulf, or he was feeling for it in the dark, and its face was cold as death; and more than once he woke with a start, feeling certain that a child's cry had sounded close to his bed.
CHAPTER IV.
Village Evidence—'Gray' on the Brain—Too Well He Knew—Mr Robins and the Baby—He Had Not Done Badly
here is certainly a penalty paid by people who keep entirely clear of gossip, though it is not by any means in proportion to the advantages they gain. The penalty is that when they particularly want to hear any piece of news, they are not likely to hear it naturally like other people, but must go out of their way to make inquiries and evince a curiosity which at once makes them remarkable.
Now every one in the village except Mr Robins heard of the baby found in the Grays' garden, and discussed how it came there, but it was only by overhearing a casual word here and there that the organist gathered even so much as that the Grays had resolved to keep the child, and were not going to send it to the workhouse. Even Bill Gray knew the organist's ways too well to trouble him with the story, though he was too full of it himself to give his usual attention at the next choir practice, and, at every available pause between chant and hymn, his head and that of the boy next him were close together in deep discourse.