, but it was against his principles to allow his mistress
to go out of his sight. Things were on a different footing now; and,
ever since they had left Redmond Hall, Nero considered himself
responsible for the safety of his two charges; so he quietly followed
them into the pleasant low-ceiled bedroom, with its window looking
over the old-fashioned garden and orchard, and laid himself down with
his nose between his paws, watching Jean fill the baby's bath, to the
edification of the two women.

Jean helped Fay unpack a few necessary articles, and then she went
down to warm the porridge for her master's supper; but Mrs. Duncan
pinned up her gray stuff gown, and sat down by the fire to undress the
baby, while Fay languidly got ready for bed.

It was well that the mother and child had fallen into the hands of
these good Samaritans. In spite of her wretchedness and the strange
weight that lay so heavy on her young heart, a sort of hazy comfort
stole over Fay as she lay between the coarse lavender-scented sheets,
and listened to her baby's cooes as he stretched his little limbs in
the warm fire-light.

"Ay, he is as fine and hearty as our Robbie was," observed Mrs.
Duncan, with a sigh; and so she prattled on, now praising the baby's
beauty, and now commenting on the fineness of his cambric shirts, and
the value of the lace that trimmed his night-dress, until Fay fell
asleep, and thought she was listening to a little brook that had
overflowed its banks, and was running down a stony hill-side.

She hardly woke up when Mrs. Duncan placed the baby in her arms, and
left them with a murmured benediction, and went down for a gossip with
Jean. "And a lovelier sight my old eyes never saw," she said, "than
that young creature, who looks only a child herself, with the bonnie
boy in her arms, and her golden-brown hair covering them both. 'Deed,
Jean, the man must have an evil spirit in him to ill-treat a little
angel like that. But we will keep her safe, my woman, as sure as my
name is Jeanie Duncan;" and to this Jean agreed. They were both
innocent unsophisticated women who knew nothing of the world's ways,
and as Mrs. Duncan had said, "they would as soon have turned a shorn
lamb away, and left it exposed to the tempest," as shut their door
against Fay and her child.

Fay was not able to rise from the bed the next day; indeed for more
than a week she was almost as helpless as a baby, and had to submit to
a great deal of nursing.