her;
anything, so that she would not be separated from this poor little baby,
whom she had learned to love in those short hours with all the strength
of her yearning heart.

At the next boarding house, recklessly enough, Dorothy gave the name of
Mrs. Brown, and she found no trouble in securing accommodations there.

"Poor child! she seems so young to be left a widow!" exclaimed the
landlady, in relating to her other boarders that night that she had let
room sixteen to such a pretty young woman, with the loveliest little
angel of a baby that ever was born.

No one ever yet took a false position without finding himself ere long
hedged in with difficulties.

And so poor Dorothy found it.

She was continually plied with questions by the rest of the boarders as
to how long since her husband had died, and how long since she had taken
off mourning, or if she had put on mourning at all for him, and if baby
reminded her of its poor, dear, dead papa.

Dorothy's alarm at this can more readily be imagined than described. She
almost felt like bursting into a flood of tears and running from the
room.

It had gone so far now that she was ashamed to tell the truth; and then
there was the terrible fear that if people knew it was not her very own
they would take it from her; and she had learned to love it with all the
fondness of her desperate, lonely heart.

And then, too, it seemed to know her and feel sorry for her.

It knew her, and would coo to her, and cry for her to take it.

She had named it, long since, little Pearl, because she had fished it
from the water. But, to tell the truth, she found it a terrible
responsibility on her hands.

She did not know what to do with the child.

She could not go out and leave it in the house, and she couldn't take it
with her.

She had been searching for a situation the last few days, and, to her
unspeakable horror, she found that no one wanted a young woman
encumbered with a child.

Had she been older, she would have known better than to have assumed
such a responsibility; but Dorothy was young, and had some of life's
bitterest lessons yet to learn.

Dorothy had turned her face resolutely against the fortune which Doctor
Bryan had left.

She quite believed, if she was not there to receive it, it would go to
Kendal, her faithless lover.

She wanted him to have it. She did not care for any of it.

She had been only a working girl when Doctor Bryan sought her out and
took