"She is a darling," Christina answered, "and if she hadn't the sweetest, most wholesome nature in the world, she would be spoilt, everybody adores her so!"
"There! and who can wonder, miss. The little dear! I was baking some scones for her tea and yours, miss, and——"
"That is very good of you, Mrs. Nairne. I was going to ask whether you would be so kind as to look in upon Baba presently; she is asleep in her cot, and quite safe there. But, if you would look at her now and then I should be so grateful. I haven't had the cart, sent round to the stables, for I must go up to the post office."
"And I'll do it with pleasure, miss. You go out with a light heart; no harm shall come to that little dear, that I'll promise you."
The post office, which occupied one side of the tiny general shop, was at the end of the straggling row of houses Graystone called its village street; and Mr. Canning, the postmaster, besides watching over His Majesty's mails, served customers with bacon and butter, sweets or string, sugar or tea, as occasion required. He was weighing out very brown and moist looking Demarara sugar when Christina entered the shop, and he looked at her over his spectacles, with all the absorbing interest felt by a villager for the stranger in their midst.
"A shillingsworth of penny stamps, please," Christina said, when with much deliberation he had tied up the parcel of brown sugar and handed it to his customer, "and a packet of halfpenny cards." Then, when the customer had departed, she asked a few questions about the neighbourhood, adding, with well-feigned carelessness:
"I suppose in such a small place as this you have no resident doctor?"
"Well, no, miss," the man answered; "we have no one nearer than Dr. Stokes—Dr. Martin Stokes. He lives on the other side of the hill at Manborough. I hope the little lady is not ailing?" Mr. Canning asked sympathetically, for Baba's gracious little personality had endeared itself to the postmaster, and to the rest of the villagers.
"No; oh, no!" Christina answered quickly; "she is very well, and we like this lovely place so much. It is a good thing, though, to know where the doctor lives, isn't it?" she added, brightly and evasively.
"Ah! there you are right, miss. Getting the doctor in time saves fetching the undertaker, as I've said more than once," and Mr. Canning bowed Christina out of his shop, with all the empressement of a courtier.