o be, and she was somewhat surprised to find Gertrude's eyes also
fixed upon the little face.

"I hope the people that child is going to will be good to him," she
said. "What do you know about them?"

"Nothing!" said Denys. "His mother said her brother had promised to
take him, but she had never seen the wife. Perhaps we shall see her
at Mixham, but anyhow, we can't do anything except look him up now and
then."

"Humph!" said Gertrude, "I should pity anybody who was in charge of
the woman who washes at the house at the bottom of our garden. _She_
comes from Mixham; Pattie used to be engaged to her brother. She looks
a perfect vixen."

"Used to be engaged?" repeated Denys, startled. "You don't mean to say
it is broken off? Poor Pattie!"

"Not poor Pattie at all," answered Gertrude sharply. "_He_ was as poor
as anything, and his isn't the sort of trade where they ever get much
money. Why, here's Mixham! Where's that child's hat? Wake up, Tommy,
or Harry, or whatever your name is!"

Jim Adams, as he had promised, had come down to meet Harry, and if he
had been asked what sort of a child he was going to look for, he would
have pointed to one of a dozen little urchins, playing up and down his
own street, and said that boys were all alike.

So, as he was looking for a nondescript boy in knickers and jacket and
cap and heavy boots, it was little wonder that he looked in vain
among the crowd of travellers who poured out of the big train on the
Junction platform, and he was proportionately surprised when a young
lady with red-brown hair and a sweet face touched him on the arm.

"Do you happen to be Mr. Jim Adams?" she asked in her soft, pretty
voice.

Jim gasped as he looked down at her, and saw the child she was holding
by the hand. A child in petticoats, almost a baby it seemed to him,
with a little black kilted frock and sailor coat, and a big white hat
with a black ribbon, and underneath it, golden curls and the sweetest
little face he had ever seen since last he saw his sister Nellie's
face!

He knew it in a moment, and his heart went out to the child with an
intensity of love that astonished even himself, and an awful sort of
choke came into his throat as he stooped and lifted Nellie's child in
his arms.

"Hullo! little chap! I'm Uncle Jim," he said.

Harry looked at him approvingly.

"I'm going to live along with you!" he said. "Mother's gone away," he
added mournfully.

The clasp of Jim's arms tighten