ing from one to the
other, with her half-vexed and half-approving laugh. "What do you want
to name her that for?"

"_I_ know what for," Julia smiled, as she watched the pink blanket out
of sight.

A little later Mrs. Toland crept in, just for a kiss, and a whimpered,
"And now you must forget all the pain, dear, and just be happy!"

Then Julia was left to her own thoughts.

She watched Miss Wheaton come and go in the soft twilight. A shaded
light bloomed suddenly, where it would not distress her eyes. The
curtains were drawn, and Ellie came softly in with a pitcher of hot milk
on a tray. Now and then the baby's piercing little "Oo-wah-wah!" came in
from the next room, and when she heard it, Julia smiled and said
faintly, "The darling!"

And as a ship that has been blown seaward, to meet the gales and to be
battered upon rocks, might be caught at last by friendlier tides and
carried safely home, so Julia felt herself carried, a helpless little
wreck, too tired to care if the waves flung her far up on shore or drew
her out to their mad embraces again.

"All forgotten?" Miss Toland had asked, from her fifty years of
ignorance, and "Now you must forget all the pain," Mrs. Toland had said,
with her motherly smile.

Queer, drifting thoughts came and went in her active brain during these
quiet days of convalescence. She thought of girls she had known at The
Alexander, girls who had cried, and who had been blamed and ostracised,
girls who had gone to the City and County Hospital for their bitter
hour, and had afterward put the babies in the Asylum! Julia's thoughts
went by the baby in the next room, and at the picture of that tender
helplessness, wronged and abandoned, her heart seemed to close like a
closing hand.

Anna Toland Studdiford would never be abandoned, no fear of that. Never
was baby more closely surrounded with love and the means of protection.
But the other babies, just as dear to other women, what of them? What of
mother hearts that must go through life knowing that there are little
cries they will never hear, tears they may never dry, tired little
bodies that will never know the restfulness of gentle arms? The terrible
sum of unnecessary human suffering rose up like a black cloud all about
her; she seemed to see long hospital wards, with silent forms filling
them day and night, night and day, the long years through; she had
glimpses of the crowded homes of the poor, the sick and helpless
mothers, the c