A Pair of Clogs | Page 8

murmuring sounds to herself, and chuckling now and then in perfect contentment. Mr Vallance stared at her in great perplexity; here was a puzzling thing! Where did the child come from, and who had left it there? Whoever it was must come and take it away at once. He would go and tell Priscilla about it--she would know what to do. But just as he let the creepers fall back over the entrance a tiny voice issued from the basket.
"Mossy," it said; "me want Mossy."
"Now, who on earth is Mossy?" thought the troubled vicar, and without waiting to hear more he sped into the house and told his tale to. Priscilla.
In a very short time Priscilla was on the spot, full of interest and energy. She knelt beside the basket and looked at the child, who stared back at her with solemn brown eyes.
"I suppose it's one of the village children," said her husband, standing by.
"Village children, Austin!" repeated his wife looking round at him; "do you really mean to say that you don't recognise the child?"
"Certainly not, my dear; I never saw it before to my knowledge."
"Why, of course it's the gypsy child we saw yesterday. And now you see I was right."
"What an awful thing!" exclaimed Mr Vallance. He sat down suddenly on the handle of a wheel-barrow close by, in utter dejection. "Then they've left it here on purpose!"
"Of course they have," said Mrs Vallance; "and you see I was right, don't you?"
"I don't know what you mean," said the vicar getting up again, "by being right. Everything's as wrong as it can be, I should say."
"I mean, that she doesn't belong to those gypsies. I was sure of it."
"Why not?" asked her husband helplessly.
"Because no mother would have given up a darling like this--she would have died first."
Mrs Vallance had taken the child on her knee while she was speaking and opened the old shawl: baby seemed to like her new position, she leaned her curly head back, stretched out her limbs easily, and gazed gravely up at the distracted vicar.
"Well," he said, "whoever she belongs to, there are only two courses to be pursued, and the first is to try and find the people who left her here. If we can't do that, there only remains--"
"What?" asked his wife looking anxiously up at him.
"There only remains--the workhouse, my dear Priscilla."
Priscilla pressed the child closer to her and stood upright facing him.
"Austin," she said, "I couldn't do it. You mustn't ask me to. I'll try and find her mother. I'll put an advertisement in the paper; but I won't send her to the workhouse. And you couldn't either. You couldn't give up a little helpless child when Heaven has laid it at your very threshold."
Mr Vallance strode quickly up and down the garden path; he foresaw that he would have to yield, and it made him very angry.
"Nonsense, my dear," he said testily; "people are much too fond of talking about Heaven doing this and that. That ill-looking scamp of a gypsy fellow hadn't much to do with Heaven, I fancy."
"Heaven chooses its own instruments," said Priscilla quietly; and Mr Vallance made no answer, for he had said that very same thing in his last sermon.
"I'll have those tramps looked after at any rate," he said, rousing himself with sudden energy. "I'll send Joe one way, and drive the other way myself in the pony-cart. They can't have got far yet."
He hurried out of the garden, and Mrs Vallance was left alone with her prize. It was almost too good to be true. Already her mind was busy with arrangements for the baby's comfort and making plans for her future--the blue-room looking into the garden for the nursery, and the blacksmith's eldest daughter for a nurse-maid, and some little white frocks and pinafores made; and what should she be called? Some simple name would do. Mary, perhaps. And then suddenly Mrs Vallance checked herself.
"What a foolish woman I am!" she said. "Very likely those horrible people will be found, and I shall have to give her up. But nothing shall induce me to believe that she belongs to them."
She kissed the child, carried her into the house, and fed her with some bread and milk, after which baby soon fell into a sound sleep. Mrs Vallance laid her on the sofa, and sat near with her work, but she could not settle at all quietly to it. Every moment she got up to look out of the window, or to listen to some sound which might be Austin coming back triumphant with news of the gypsies. But the day went on and nothing happened. The vicarage was full of suppressed excitement, the maids whispered softly together, and came creeping in at intervals to look at the