That afternoon he purposely took his way home over the hillside and down the lane by the Grays' cottage, with a conviction that he should see the baby tricked out in some of those frilled and tucked little garments over which Jane Sands had lavished so much time and attention that morning. But to his surprise he saw her in much the same costume as before, only the pinafore this time was washed-out lavender instead of pink, and, as she was in Bill's arms, and he, as the youngest of the family, being inexperienced in nursing, a more crumpled effect was produced than his mother had done. He could only conclude that Jane had not found time yet to take the things, or that Mrs Gray was reserving them for a more showy occasion.
But he found Jane just returning as he came up to his house, and she looked far more hot and dusty than the short walk up the lane to the Grays accounted for, but with a beaming look on her kind face that had not been there for many a day.
'Well,' he said, 'Jane, have you been to Stokeley?'
'Yes,' she said, 'and I took the things you were good enough to say the baby might have. They were pleased.'
She, too, spoke with a curious meaning in her voice and manner which somehow faded when she saw the want of response in his face. Indeed there was a very distinct feeling of disappointment and irritation in his feelings. For after all those clothes had actually gone to some other baby. Well! well! it is a selfish world after all, and each of us has his own interests which take him up and engross him. No doubt this little common child at Stokeley was all in all to Jane Sands, and she was glad enough of a chance to pick all the best out of those baby clothes up-stairs that he remembered his young wife preparing so lovingly for her baby and his. It gave him quite a pang to think of some little Sands or Jenkins adorned with these tucks he had seen run so carefully and frills sewn so daintily. He had evidently given Jane credit for a great deal more unselfishness and devotion to him and his than she really felt, for she had all the time been busy working and providing for her own people, when he had thought she was full of consideration for Edith's child. Pshaw! he had to pull himself together and take himself to task. For even in these few days he had grown to think of that little brown-faced, dark-eyed baby as his grandchild, instead of Martin Blake's brat. Insensibly and naturally, too, the child had brought back the memory of its mother, first as baby, then as sweet and winsome little child; then as bright, wilful, coaxing girl, and, lastly, unless he kept his thoughts well in check, there followed on these brighter memories the shadow of a white worn woman under the yew-tree in the churchyard, and of a voice that said 'Father.'
That uninteresting child at Stokeley apparently required a great supply of clothes, for Jane Sands was hard at work again that evening, and when he came in from the choir practice, he heard her singing over her work as she used to do in old days, and when he went in for his pipe, she looked up with a smile that seemed to expect a sympathetic response, and made no effort to conceal the work as she had done the day before.
He stood morosely by the fireplace for a minute, shaking the ashes out of his pipe.
'You're very much taken up with that baby,' he said crossly; and she looked up quickly, thinking that perhaps he had a hole in his stocking, or a button off his shirt to complain of, as a consequence of her being engrossed in other work. But he went on without looking at her, and apparently deeply absorbed in getting an obstinate bit of ash out of the pipe bowl.
'There's a child at Mrs Gray's they say is very short of clothes. That baby, you know'——
'That baby that was found in the garden,' Jane said in such a curiously uninterested tone of voice that he could not resist glancing round at her; but she was just then engaged in that mysterious process of 'stroking the gathers,' which the intelligent feminine reader will understand requires a certain attention. If this indifference were assumed, Jane Sands was a much better actor and a more deceptive character than he had believed possible; if she were too entirely absorbed in her own people to give even a thought to her young mistress's baby, she was not the Jane Sands he thought he had known for the last twenty years. The only alternative was that she knew nothing about the baby having been left on his door-step, nor of the meeting with his daughter in the churchyard which had preceded it.