will be
'fair,'" or, "She will be intelligent," settles the matter for them.
They give the baby a chance: should we do less?

One night I woke suddenly with the feeling of someone near, and saw,
standing beside my bed out on the verandah, the friend who has sent us
so many little ones. She had something wrapped in a shawl in her arms,
and as she moved the shawl a thin cry smote me with a fear, for a baby
who has come to stay does not cry like that.

It was a dear little baby, one of the type the Temple women prize, and
will take so much trouble to rear. The little head was finely formed,
and the tiny face, in its minute perfection of feature, looked as if
some fairy had shaped it out of a cream rose-petal. Alas, there was that
look we know so well and fear so much--that look of not belonging to us,
the elsewhere, other-world look. But we could not do this work at all,
we would not have the heart to do it, if we did not hope. So we go on
hoping.

The baby filled the next half-hour, for a thing so small can be hungry
and say so; and together we heated the water and made the food, till,
satisfied at length that her little charge was comfortable, our friend
lay down to rest. "Jesus therefore being weary with His journey, sat
thus on the well." There is something in the utter weariness after a
long, hot journey, ending with seven hours in a bullock-cart over rough
tracks by night, which always recalls that word of human tiredness. How
I wished that the morning were not so near as I saw my friend asleep at
last! A few hours later she was on her homeward way, and we were left
with our hopes and our fears, and the baby.

For three weeks we hoped against fear, till there was no room left for
any more hope, or for anything but prayer that the child might cease to
suffer. And after a month of struggle for life, the tiny, tossing thing
lay still.

"To what purpose is this waste?" Was it strange that the question came
again to ourselves, and to others too? Our dear friend's toilsome
travelling--a journey equal in expenditure of time to one from London
to Vienna and back again, and very much more exhausting, the faithful
nurse's patience, the little baby's pain! And all the love that had
grown through the weeks, and all the efforts that had failed, the very
train ticket and bandy fare--was it all as water spilt on the ground?
Was it waste?

We knew in our hearts it was not. The dear little babe was safe; and it
might be that