one of 'em, they say, a week or two ago with just such a
baby as this 'un. My master he 've made a few inquirements; but there!
for my part I don't care if we don't hear no more of her folks, and
Gray's much of the same mind, having took a terrible fancy to the
child. And it's plain as she ain't got no mother worth the name, as
would leave her like that, and neglected too shameful. As there ain't
no excuse, to my way of thinking, for a baby being dirty, let folks be
as poor as they may.'

Somewhere deep down in Mr Robins's mind, unacknowledged to himself,
there was a twinge of resentment at this reflection on the mother's
treatment of the baby.

'She 's as sweet as a blossom now,' went on Mrs Gray, tossing the baby
up, who laughed and crowed and stretched its arms. Yes, he could see
the likeness, he was sure of it; and it brought back to his mind with
sudden vividness a young mother's look of pride and love as she held up
her little girl for the father's admiration. Mother and child had then
been wonderfully alike, and in this baby he could trace a likeness to
both.

Mrs Gray went maundering on, as her manner was, interspersing her
narrative with baby nonsense and endearments, and Mr Robins forgot his
errand, which was, after all, only a pretext, and stood half-listening,
and more than half back in the old days of memory, and once he so far
forgot himself as to snap his fingers at the child, and touch one of
its warm, little hands, which immediately closed round his finger with
a baby's soft, tenacious grasp, from which it required a certain gentle
effort to escape.

'A pleasant, chatty sort of man the organist,' Mrs Gray said, having
talked nearly all the time herself, with only a word or two from him
now and then as reply; 'and not a bit of pride about him, let folks say
what they like. Why, he stopped ever so long and had a deal to say;
and there, Bill, you just run down with the book, as he went off after
all without it.'

Mr Robins went home slowly across the fields in a curiously softened
frame of mind. Perhaps it was the soft west wind, fragrant with sweet
spring scents of cowslips and cherry blossom, or the full glad sunshine
on all the varied green of tree and hedge, a thousand tints of that
'shower of greennesses' poured down so lavishly by the Giver of all
good things; perhaps it was the larks springing up from the clover in
such an ecstasy of song; or perhaps it was the clasp of a baby's hand
o