effy, get the crib down, please, as softly as you can," begged
Charlotte, when she had laid the baby on her own white bed and
noiselessly closed the door. Jeff tried hard to do her bidding, but the
crib did not get down-stairs without a few scrapings and bumpings, which
made Charlotte hold her breath lest they rouse a sleeping household.

"Now go down and warm some milk for her in the blue basin. Don't get it
hot--just lukewarm. Put the tiniest pinch of sugar in it."

"You seem to know a lot about babies," Jeff murmured, pausing an instant
to watch his sister gently pulling off the baby's clothes.

"I do. Didn't I have the care of you?" answered Charlotte, with a
mischievous smile.

"Two years younger than yourself? Oh, of course, I forgot that," and
Jeff crept away down-stairs after the milk. It took him some time, and
when he came tiptoeing back he found the baby in her little coarse
flannel nightgown, her round blue eyes wide-awake again.

"She seems to accept you for a mother all right," he commented, as
Charlotte held the cup to the baby's lips, cuddling her in a blanket
meanwhile. But the girl's eyes filled at this, remembering poor Annie,
and Jeff added hastily, "What'll happen if she wakes up and cries in the
night? Babies usually do, don't they?"

"Annie has always said Ellen didn't, much, and she's getting to sleep so
late I hope she won't to-night. I don't feel equal to telling the others
what I've done till morning," and Charlotte smiled rather faintly. Now
that she had the baby at home she was beginning to wonder what Lanse and
Celia would say.

"Never mind. I'll stand by you. You're all right, whatever you do--if I
did think you were rather off your head at first," promised Jeff,
sturdily. He was never known to fail Charlotte in an emergency.

Whether it was the strange surroundings or something wrong about the
last meal of the day cannot be stated, but Baby Ellen did wake up. It
was at three o'clock in the morning that Charlotte, who, excited by the
strangeness of the situation, had but just fallen asleep, was roused by
a small wail.

The baby seemed not to know her in the trailing blue kimono, with her
two long curly braids swinging over her shoulders, and in spite of all
that Charlotte could do, the infantile anguish of spirit soon filled the
house.

Charlotte walked the floor with her, alternately murmuring consolation
and singing the lullabies of her own childhood; but the uproar
continued