“I’m sorry I didn’t. I’ve been sorry ever since. But you took me so by surprise. Of course I really wanted him when I could straighten out my thoughts.”
“We have all been frightened nearly to death thinking the little fellow was lost,” Anna remarked reproachfully.
“I didn’t think of that,” Mrs. Langley returned meekly, stroking the baby’s little hand. “I saw him go by and I wanted to see him so badly that I got my shawl and followed as far as the post office. He was all alone and so near the road that a horse might have run over him if it shied. Really, Anna, I was just meaning to stand by him until your brothers came out; but he reached out his little hands and I had to take him—he knew me, you see. For he said Baa-baa, and it seemed as if he was asking me to bring him to see this little lamb; and as I wanted to see it myself, I brought him up here.”
“Brought him up here!” exclaimed Anna suddenly realizing the magnitude of the action. “How in this world did you ever do it?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure, but he didn’t seem heavy. He’s so still, I suppose. I didn’t mean to stay at all, but it is so warm and pleasant; and baby has been so happy that I forgot everything else.”
Meanwhile, Seth Miller had driven out to the bridge and waited, talking the while to the Phelps horse which, like most of the horses in the village, was a great pet and like one of the family. Presently he caught a flash of red among the pines on the hill, saw his daughter waving to him, and drove on until he saw her waiting at the lower gate of the cemetery with the baby and a strange, foreign-looking woman whom he took to be a gypsy who had probably been carrying the baby away when Anna caught her. Again and again that night at home he exclaimed over his surprise to think that the old and faded woman with the piercing black eyes who might have been a gypsy crone was none other than the handsome Mr. Langley’s wife. And yet he granted she was pleasant-spoken and the baby seemed to take to her amazingly and he only hoped she wasn’t out of her head.
Anna got out with Mrs. Langley at the parsonage and asked her father to bring the baby in. Seth Miller held the baby close, whispering to him and lengthening the inconsiderable distance by crawling along, the while Anna explained that she would have to go in for a little and asked him to stop at Miss Penny’s with the news and have someone come for her with the pony later.
“And pa, if you see Mr. Langley, send him home right away,” she added eagerly. “Or—if you happen to hear where he is, do go get him and bring him home.”