her own rather uninviting bread. "It was
only packened up last night--but perhaps it was the taking it to bed. I
took it to bed acos I didn't want nobody to see. But the bicsits is
nice. Mayn't baby have a bicsit, little baby's mother? If I had got to
the grandmother's cottage there'd have been cake. You hasn't none cake,
has you?"

"No, Missy. You see I didn't know you were coming. If your mamma would
let you come another day and I knew in time, I could bake a nice cake."

"Yes," said Hoodie, "and baby might have some. Does baby like cake?"

"She hasn't no teeth to bite it with yet, Missy dear," said the young
woman.

"No teess!" exclaimed Hoodie, "what a funny baby. Did God forget zem?"
she added, in a lower voice.

The young woman turned away to hide her laughter; and just at this
moment there came a rap at the door--a well-known rap evidently, for up
jumped the young woman with a pleased face.

"David!" she exclaimed, as she opened the door, "I thought you wouldn't
be back till late, or I'd have waited tea."

"I came in to say as I've got to go out again," said the man--a
good-humoured looking young labourer--"little baby" had every reason to
be good-humoured with such pleasant tempered father and mother!--"I've
to drive over to Greenoaks to fetch some little pigs, so I mayn't be in
till late. But bless us!" he exclaimed, as he just then caught sight of
Hoodie seated in perfect satisfaction and evidently quite at home, at
the tea-table, "who ever's this you've got with you, Liz?"

His surprise was so comical that it set "Liz" off laughing again.

"Bless _me_ if I can tell you, David," she said. "She's the most
old-fashioned little piece of goods I ever came across. But such a nice
little lady too, and that taken with our baby! She won't tell me her
name nor nothing," and then she went on to describe to David, Hoodie's
arrival and all she had said.

David scratched his head, as, half hidden in the doorway, where Hoodie
had not yet caught sight of him, he glanced at the child, still deeply
interested in her "tea."

"It's my opinion," he said solemnly, as if what he was about to say was
something that could not possibly have struck any one else; "it's my
opinion as her nurse or some one has been cross to her and she's runned
away."

"But what shall we do?" said Mrs. Liz, a little anxiously. "How shall we
find out where she belongs to?"

"Oh, easy enough," said David. "She's but a baby. And even if she