BROWN'S UNBORROWED BABY
"Don! Don't take it in! They'll come back for it if you don't—they're watching somewhere. Put it back on the doorstone—don't look at it!"
"Why, Sue!" he answered, and for an instant his eyes flashed reproof into hers. "On such a night?"
"But what can you do with it?"
"Make it comfortable, first."
He was unwrapping the bundle. The child was swathed none too heavily in clean cotton comforters; it was crying frantically, and its hands, as Brown's encountered them in the unwinding, were cold and blue. There emerged from the wrappings an infant of possibly six weeks' existence in a world which had used it ill.
"Will you take him while I get some milk?" asked Brown, as naturally as if handing crying babies over to his sister were an everyday affair with them both.
She shook her head, backing away. "Oh, mercy, no! I shouldn't know what to do with it."
"Sue!" Her brother's tone was suddenly stern. "Don't be that sort of woman—don't let me think it of you!"
He continued to hold out the small wailing bundle. She bit her lip, reluctantly extended unaccustomed arms, and received the foundling into them.