Meanwhile, Miss Avilda Cummins had left her window and gone into the
next room for a skein of yarn. She answered the knock, however; and,
opening the door, stood rooted to the threshold in speechless
astonishment, very much as if she had seen the shades of her ancestors
drawn up in line in the dooryard.

Off went Timothy's hat. He hadn't seen the lady's face very clearly when
she was knitting at the window, or he would never have dared to knock;
but it was too late to retreat. Looking straight into her cold eyes with
his own shining gray ones, he said bravely, but with a trembling voice,
"Do you need any babies here, if you please?" (Need any babies! What an
inappropriate, nonsensical expression, to be sure; as if a baby were
something exquisitely indispensable, like the breath of life, for
instance!)

No answer. Miss Vilda was trying to assume command of her scattered
faculties and find some clue to the situation. Timothy concluded that
she was not, after all, the lady of the house; and, remembering the
marble doorplate in the orchard, tried again. "Does Miss Martha Cummins
live here, if you please?" (Oh, Timothy! what induced you, in this
crucial moment of your life, to touch upon that sorest spot in Miss
Vilda's memory?)

"What do you want?" she faltered.

"I want to get somebody to adopt my baby," he said; "if you haven't got
any of your own, you couldn't find one half as dear and as pretty as she
is; and you needn't have me too, you know, unless you should need me to