," she chuckled, her lisp getting the better
of her. "Yeth, there ith. I know _you_, Mithter Fairmeadow."

John Fairmeadow ridiculously failed to smother a chuckle in a growl.

"Doth it bite?" Pattie Batch inquired, maliciously feigning a terrific
fright.

"Nonsense!" John Fairmeadow declared; "it hasn't a tooth in its head."
He added, with one eye closed, and palms lifted: "But--aha!--just you
wait and _see_."

"Well," Pattie Batch drawled, "I th'pose it'th a turkey. It'th
thertainly _thome_thin' t' eat," she declared.

"Good _enough_ to eat, I bet you!" John Fairmeadow agreed, with the air
of having concealed in that veritable big basket the sweetest morsel in
all the world.

"Ith it a chicken?"

"Nonsense!" said John Fairmeadow; "it's fa-a-a-ar more delicious than
chicken. Hi, there, Poll Pry!" he roared, and just in time; "keep your
hands off."

"Is it anything for the house?"

"No, indeed; the house is for _it_."

Pattie Batch scowled in perplexity.

"The back yard, too," John Fairmeadow added; "and don't you forget that
this whole place--and all the world--belongs to just what's in that
basket."

"I'm sure," poor Pattie Batch mused, scratching her curls in
bewilderment, "I can't guess what it _could_ be."

Both were now staring at the basket; and at that very moment the blanket
covering--_stirred_!

"Ith a dog!" Pattie Batch exclaimed.

"Dog!" the outraged John Fairmeadow roared. "Nothing of the sort! No
_ma'am_!"

Pattie Batch clasped her hands. "It ith, too!" she cried. "I thaw it
move."

"It is _not_!"

"Ith a kitten, then."

"It is _not_ a kitten!"

Thereupon--while the Shadow, by whom John Fairmeadow had been dogged
that night, now peered with acute attention through a break in the frost
on the window-pane--thereupon, without any warning save a second slight
movement of the blanket, a sound--and not by any means a growl--the
thing was certainly not a dog--a sound proceeded from the depths of the
basket.

Pattie Batch jumped away.

"Well, well!" cried John Fairmeadow; "what's the row?"

Row, indeed! Pattie Batch was gone white; and she swayed a little, and
shivered, too, and clenched her little hands to restrain her amazing
hope. "Oh," she moaned, at last, far short of breath enough, "tell me
quick: ith it--ith it a--a----"

John Fairmeadow threw back the blanket in a most dramatic fashion; and
there, wrapped in the neglected fawn-skin cloak, all dimpled and
smiling, lay--