The kind soul with the sharp tongue could bear no more. "And so you shall, dear. Certainly you shall, my pretty poppet," she said with infinite compassion. "As sure as my name is Margret Neilsen you shall," she said again, with stern determination. "They have left me here as a watch-dog with an order that nobody is to come near the child, but that was meant for somebody else--somebody who was going to steal it--so they said--though what a grown man can want with a suckling infant it baffles my stupid old head to see. But what a silly I am to keep you at the door! Come up-stairs, my precious. Go before me, Thora, dear! That's right--but not so quick--you shall see your baby soon enough. And Thora, darling, if I haven't exactly tried to take it back to you it wasn't because I didn't love you, and feel for you, and suffer with you, my poor child, but because your father and Helga and even Oscar--no, the other way, Thora--baby is in the front bedroom."
"Is she well?" said Thora, breathing quickly as she reached the landing.
"She's as well as well, and so rosy and bonny--look!" said Aunt Margret, pushing ahead of Thora and opening the bedroom door.
But having climbed the stairs so much too rapidly, Thora paused at the threshold of the room and held her left hand hard against her side. "Wait! I can't go in yet," she said. "Not just yet, Aunt Margret. Is she asleep?"
"Yes, she's fast asleep, bless her!"
"Is that her breathing?"
"No, that's the cat. Yes, it is the baby. But come, my own, come," said Aunt Margret, and then, holding her breath, the young mother entered the room.
The child was sleeping in a cradle with a hood covered with light blue lace, and its little head, streaked with yellow hair, lay red against the white pillow. A cat purred on the floor in a warm shaft from the setting sun, and all was sweet and peaceful.
"My baby! My baby!" cried Thora, and she sank down on her knees by the cot and stretched her arms over it like a bird covering its nest with her sheltering wings.
The child was awakened by the soft gale of its mother's breath on its sleeping face and it began to cry, whereupon Thora gathered it in her arms and lifted it out of the cot and nursed it lovingly, holding its little plunging hand in her own hand, so thin and white and delicate.