“Anna, someone may have kidnapped the two of ’em,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t know as you have heard, but they do say there’s a strange man around the village peering in windows at night and the like.”
Anna almost laughed. “They’d bring Mrs. Langley back when daylight came,” she returned flippantly.
She directed her father to drive down the Wenham road, beyond the house where they had lived when the boys were babies, to the bridge and to watch from there, dropping her at a point she would indicate.
“Give me your bandana,” she ordered. “Now, Pa, if you see me waving it, you come straight towards it as far as you can come with a horse and wait. I’m going cross lots but you may see me later against the western sky line.”
“O Anna, I don’t dare have you go off alone away from beaten tracks with strange men and kidnappers about,” he protested. “Let me hitch the horse and go with you.”
But Anna laughed, reassured him, and disappeared. Making a bit of detour to avoid being seen, she headed for the cemetery. Anxious still, she was nevertheless relieved, and once on the direct path, ran all the way, leaping ditches, pushing through underbrush and taking the steepest part of the bank as if it were a plain. When she reached the top, she was hot and breathless. Throwing her jacket on top of the wall, she vaulted it lightly and made for a point whence she could see the Langley lot. Even while she caught her breath and wondered if she should dare look, she heard a little familiar sound.
The girl stopped short. For a second she could not move. The complete relief from suspense was so great that she had to choke back her tears. For there they were, just where she hard hardly dared to think of them as being, Mrs. Langley wrapped in a gay old-fashioned paisley shawl with her head uncovered, sitting on the ground with Joe, Junior, in her lap. The baby was fondling the little marble image and murmuring baa-baa, the while Mrs. Langley looked on as if she were in Paradise.
As she stole towards the little group and stood before them, Anna was unaware that tears were streaming down her cheeks. The baby saw her first and smiled. “Baa-baa” he cried out stretching out his hands, and Mrs. Langley looked up quickly. Her expression changed instantly from beatitude to deep guilt.
“You said you would give him to me for a Christmas present, anyhow, Anna,” she declared, half defiantly, half-entreatingly.
“Yes, but you didn’t—take him,” gasped Anna dropping down beside them. She was hugging Joe, Junior, but she did not take him into her arms.