mother say? How _can_ I tell her?" Then she broke into sobs again.

It was dreadful, sitting there alone, after Bub's footsteps died away
in the distance, thinking and wondering hopelessly about the baby.
Mandy remembered how his little head, heavy with sleep, had drooped
lower and lower, and tired her arms. How gladly would she feel that
ache if she could only hold the warm little body in her arms again!

How still it was! She could hear the children at McNeal's, down the
road, laughing and calling after their father as he went away to his
work. There was fresh trouble in the thought of _her_ father coming
home at night. Would it not be better that she should go away and hide
herself, where no reproachful eyes could reach her? Would they miss
her, and feel sorry for poor little Mandy? Would her mother go about
looking pale and quiet, thinking of her gently?

Hark! What noise was that under the drooping curtain of nets? Now she
does not hear it; but presently it comes again--a soft, happy little
baby voice, cooing and talking to itself.

With joyful haste, Mandy lifted the heavy festoon of nets, and crawled
under. There, in the warm, sunny gloom, lying all rosy and tumbled,
with his clothes around his neck, and the old red shawl hopelessly
tangled round the bare and active legs, lay baby, cramming his fists in
his mouth or tossing them about, while he talked stories to the gleams
of sunlight that flickered down through the meshes of the nets.

How he had managed to roll so far, Mandy did not stop to wonder about.
She scooped him up into her arms, the bare legs kicking and struggling,
and crawled with him into the open air.