n ever before, lying at the bottom of the new black box. It was
wonderful to think of, and very confusing to the mind. There would even
be a new baby to look after. But when Biddy reached this point she
smiled securely, for she had no fears about the baby, though Mrs Roy
had looked so doubtfully at her and said that she was small. Small!
What had that to do with it? Biddy felt in herself a large capacity for
handling babies. Had she not brought Stevie through teething attended
with alarming complications? She was not likely to think much of Mrs
Roy's baby after that.

And indeed Biddy was one of those people who seem formed by nature in
body and mind on purpose to be nurses. The babies were comfortable in
her strong capable arms, and their little woes and troubles were quieted
and soothed by her patient placid temper. Then, too, she had, as her
mother had said, a great deal of experience, for though she was only
thirteen years old now, she had always, ever since she could remember
anything, had a baby on her mind. A baby had always been the chief
circumstance in her life from the time when she was too small to do
anything but keep watch by its cradle, to that when she learnt her
lessons for school with a baby in her arms. In her play-hours, when the
children of Buzley's Court gathered to enjoy themselves after their own
manner in the summer evenings, Biddy looked on from the door-step--with
the baby. By the time baby number one was beginning to stagger about,
and seize upon knives and scissors and other dangerous playthings, baby
number two--pink and incapable--was ready for Biddy's closest attention.
Life, therefore, without a baby on hand would have seemed to her
unnatural and even impossible; and the baby at Wavebury, instead of
something to be dreaded, was the only idea her mind rested on with the
confidence of long familiarity.

"For babies," she thought, "are pretty much alike. There's fat ones and
there's thin ones. The fat ones don't cry so much, and the thin ones
do, and that's about the only way they differ."

That night was a very short one to Biddy, and it seemed to her that she
was still asleep and dreaming as she and her mother hurried along the
cold grey streets in the early morning. Even when they reached the
station, much too soon for the train, she could hardly take in the sense
of all her mother was repeating to her so earnestly, though she heard
the words.

Not to lean against the