t, 'enjoying bad
health,' is not promising for farm-work, and, being fond of his book
and a favourite at school, his mother cherishes hopes of his becoming a
school-teacher in days to come.

But such is the perversity of human nature, that though many a Downside
mother with a family of little steps envied Mrs Gray her compact family
and the small amount of washing attached to it, that ungrateful woman
yearned after an occupant for the old wooden cradle, and treasured up
the bits of baby things that had belonged to Tom and Bill, and nursed
up any young thing that came to hand and wanted care, bringing up a
motherless blind kitten with assiduous care and patience, as if the
supply of that commodity was not always largely in excess of the
demand, and lavishing more care on a sick lamb or a superfluous young
pig than most of the neighbours' babies received.

So when one evening in May, Gray came in holding a bundle in his arms
and poked it into her lap as she sat darning the holes in Tom's
stockings (she was not good at needlework, but she managed, as she
said, to 'goblify' the holes), he knew pretty well that it was into no
unwilling arms that he gave the baby.

'And a mercy it was as the darning-needle didn't run right into the
little angel,' Mrs Gray always said in recounting the story.

He had been down to the village to fetch some tobacco, for the Grays'
cottage was right away from the village, up a lane leading on to the
hillside, and there were no other cottages near. Tom was in bed,
though it was not eight yet--but he was generally ready for bed when he
had had his tea; and Bill was up on the hill, a favourite resort of
his, and especially when it was growing dark and the great indigo sky
spread over him, with the glory of the stars coming out.

'He never were like other lads,' his mother used to say with a mixture
of pride and irritation; 'always mooning about by himself on them old
hills.'

The cottage door stood open as it always did, and Mrs Gray sat there,
plainly to be seen from the lane, with Tom's gray stocking and her eyes
and the tallow candle as near together as possible. She did not hear a
sound, though she was listening for Bill's return, and, even though
Tom's snores penetrated the numerous crevices in the floor above, they
were hardly enough to drown other sounds.

So there was no knowing when the bundle was laid just inside the
cottage gate, not quite in the middle of the brick path, but on