"Why shouldn't I call myself Mrs. instead of Miss Brown? One name is as good as another," she said to herself. It was all the same to her; anything, so that she would not be separated from this poor little baby, whom she had learned to love in those short hours with all the strength of her yearning heart.
At the next boarding house, recklessly enough, Dorothy gave the name of Mrs. Brown, and she found no trouble in securing accommodations there.
"Poor child! she seems so young to be left a widow!" exclaimed the landlady, in relating to her other boarders that night that she had let room sixteen to such a pretty young woman, with the loveliest little angel of a baby that ever was born.
No one ever yet took a false position without finding himself ere long hedged in with difficulties.
And so poor Dorothy found it.
She was continually plied with questions by the rest of the boarders as to how long since her husband had died, and how long since she had taken off mourning, or if she had put on mourning at all for him, and if baby reminded her of its poor, dear, dead papa.
Dorothy's alarm at this can more readily be imagined than described. She almost felt like bursting into a flood of tears and running from the room.
It had gone so far now that she was ashamed to tell the truth; and then there was the terrible fear that if people knew it was not her very own they would take it from her; and she had learned to love it with all the fondness of her desperate, lonely heart.
And then, too, it seemed to know her and feel sorry for her.
It knew her, and would coo to her, and cry for her to take it.