ANNA MILLER went forth exultantly, hugging the certainty to her heart that Joe, Junior, loved her best and that she had, therefore, a right to keep him to grow up in an household wherein everyone loved and wanted him. But all her elation died out at the sight of Mr. Langley’s face as it looked down from the pulpit. He looked as he had never looked before, and the girl knew only too well that it was all because of the baby’s visit to the parsonage yesterday. He looked weary—at once wistfully and radiantly weary. He looked as if he had been through floods and stood on mountain summits. He looked, poor dear, as if he ought to have a darling, cuddling, prattling baby at the parsonage all the time.
So the question was unsettled again and settled the other way, though Anna lay awake for hours that night before she announced the painful decision formally to herself. And even then she did not dare trust herself until she had burned all her bridges behind her. She hastened over to the parsonage late Monday afternoon.
At the door, Big Bell enquired eagerly though shyly for the blessed baby. When Anna told her of his feats with the picture book, Bell laughed and choked and got out of the way quickly to conceal her tears. Anna’s eyes were moist as she entered Mrs. Langley’s room.
“O Mrs. Langley, what do you think now?” she cried, and proceeded to relate the story of the pictures at greater length. And as she told it, she and Mrs. Langley laughed and cried together in new intimacy.
“Why didn’t you bring him with you?” Mrs. Langley asked wistfully. And the girl’s heart sank to feel how fatally easy it was to be to give away the baby. She spoke very low in order to keep her voice steady.
“Because—O, Mrs. Langley, I don’t think we’ll keep little Joe. We all love him—even ma, but we don’t really need him and—don’t you know someone who would like a baby boy that talks?”
Mrs. Langley stared at the girl. The blinds were raised to-day, though not so high, and she wore the pretty gown and becoming arrangement of her hair. She looked even more attractive than she had on Saturday, for she seemed used to the change. It was almost as if she had always let in the sunshine and the rich rosy afterglow which prevailed now and had never resembled Red-Riding-Hood’s wolf in her grandmother’s cap and gown. And Anna jumped at the conclusion any young or immature person might have made that the transformation within must be as complete and thorough.
“Wouldn’t you like him yourself—you and Mr. Langley?” she asked gently. “If so, I’ll give him to you as a Christmas present.”
Mrs. Langley only stared the more blankly. The idea was absolutely new and strange to her mind and therefore startling. Never in all her life before had she been so surprised, so astounded.
Then suddenly a sharp twinge of neuralgia, zigzagging up her face into her head converted her confusion into a sort of blind rage. As it died away, it left her with a sensation of faintness and sickness.