"If it's any thing you've got to say against that poor girl out there,"
pointing to the garden, where Sally was busy tying up chrysanthemums
"you may as well save yourself the trouble. I shan't hear it," and Hetty
looked her unwelcome visitor still more defiantly in the face. Mrs.
Little colored, and stung at last into a command of her organs of
speech, said, not without dignity:

"You needn't suppose that I wish to do any thing to injure the woman my
son has married. It was Jim who asked his father to tell you--"

"For goodness' sake, do say what it is you've got to say, can't you?"
burst out Hetty, impatiently. But Mrs. Little was not to be hurried.
Between her uneasiness at being face to face with Hetty, and her false
sense of embarrassment in speaking of the subject she had come to speak
of, it took her a long time to make Hetty understand that poor Sally,
finding that she was to be a mother again, had been afraid to tell Hetty
herself, and had taken this method of letting her know the fact.

Hetty listened breathlessly, her blue eyes opening wide, and her cheeks
growing red. She did not speak. Mrs. Little misinterpreted her silence.

"If you didn't want the baby here, I 'd take it," she said almost
beseechingly, "if Sally'd let me: it would break Jim's heart if they
should have to leave here."

"Not want the baby!" shouted Hetty, in a voice which reached Sally in
the garden, and made her look up, thinking she was called. "I should
think you must be crazy, Mrs. Little;" and, with the involuntary words,
there entered for the first time into her mind a wonder whether Mrs.