Millbank;

Hester’s advent into the kitchen was followed by a great commotion, and Ruey forgot to pour any water upon the tea designed for Roger, but set the pot upon the hot stove, where it soon began to melt with the heat. But neither Hester nor Ruey heeded it, so absorbed were they in the little bundle which the former had laid upon the table, and which showed unmistakable signs of life and vigorous babyhood by kicking at the shawl which enveloped it, and thrusting out two little fat, dimpled fists, which beat the air as the child began to scream lustily and try to free itself from its wrappings.

“The Lord have mercy on us! what have you got?” Ruey exclaimed, while Hester, with a pale face and compressed lip, replied:

“A brat that some vile woman in the cars asked Roger to hold while she got out at a station. Of course she didn’t go back, and so, fool-like, he brought it home, because it was pretty, he said, and he felt so sorry for it. I always knew he had a soft spot, but I didn’t think it would show itself this way.”

It was the first time Hester had ever breathed a word of complaint against the boy Roger, whose kindness of heart and great fondness for children were proverbial; and now, sorry that she had done so, she tried to make amends by taking the struggling child from the table and freeing it from the shawl which she had carried with her to the depot, never guessing the purpose to which it would be applied. It was a very pretty, fat-faced baby, apparently nine or ten months old, and the hazel eyes were bright as buttons, Ruey said, her heart warming at once toward the little stranger, at whom Hester looked askance. There was a heavy growth of dark brown hair upon the head, with just enough curl in it to make it lie in rings about the forehead and neck. The clothes, though soiled by travelling, were neatly made, and showed marks of pains and care; while about the neck was a fine gold chain, to which was attached a tiny locket, with the initials “L. G.” engraved upon it. These things came out one by one as Hester and Ruey together examined the child, which did not evince the least fear of them, but which, when Ruey stroked its cheek caressingly, looked up in her face with a coaxing, cooing noise, and stretched its arms toward her.

“Little darling,” the motherly girl exclaimed, taking it at once from Hester’s lap and hugging it to her bosom. “I’m so glad it is here,—the house will be as merry again with a baby in it.”

“Do you think Roger will keep it? You must be crazy,” Hester said sharply, when Frank, who had divided his time between the parlor and kitchen, and who had just come from the former, chimed in:

“Yes, he will,—he told mother so. He said he always wanted a sister, and he should keep her, and mother’s rowin’ him for it.”

By this it will be seen that the child was the topic of conversation in the parlor as well as kitchen, Mrs. Walter Scott asking numberless questions, and Roger explaining as far as was possible what was to himself a mystery. A young woman, carrying a baby in her arms, and looking very tired and frightened, had come into the car at Cincinnati, he said, and asked to sit with him. She was a pretty, dark-faced woman, with bright black eyes, which seemed to look right through one, and which examined him very sharply. She did not talk much to him, but appeared to be wrapped in thoughts which must have been very amusing, as she would occasionally laugh quietly to herself, and then relapse into an abstracted mood. Roger thought now that she seemed a little strange, though at the time he had no suspicions of her, and was very kind to the baby, whom she asked him to hold. He was exceedingly fond of children, especially little girls, and he took this one readily, and fed it with candy, with which his pockets were always filled. In this way they travelled until it began to grow dark and they stopped at ——, a town fifty miles or more from Cincinnati. Here the woman asked him to look after her baby a few moments while she went into the next car, to see a friend.

“If she gets hungry, give her some milk,” she added, taking a bottle from the little basket which she had with her under the seat.

Without the slightest hesitation Roger consented to play the part of nurse to the little girl, who was sleeping at the time, and whom the mother, if mother she were, had lain upon the unoccupied seat in front. Bending close to the round, flushed face, the woman whispered something; then, with a kiss upon the lips, as if in benediction, she went out, and Roger saw her no more. He did not notice whether she went into another car or left the train entirely. He only knew that a half hour passed and she did not return; then another half hour went by; and some passengers claimed one of the seats occupied by him and his charge. In lifting the child he woke her, but instead of crying, she rubbed her pretty eyes with her little fists, and then, with a smile, laid her head confidingly against his bosom and was soon sleeping again. So long as she remained quiet, Roger felt no special uneasiness about the mother’s protracted absence, which had now lengthened into nearly two hours; but when at last the child began to cry, and neither candy, nor milk, nor pounding on the car window, nor his lead pencil, nor his jack-knife, nor watch had any effect upon her, he began to grow very anxious, and to the woman in front who asked rather sharply, “what was the matter, and what he was doing with that child alone,” he said,—

“I am taking care of her while her mother sees a friend in the next car. I wish she would come back. She’s been gone ever so long.”

The cries were screams by this time,—loud, passionate screams, which indicated great strength of lungs, and roused up the drowsy passengers, who began, some of them, to grumble, while one suggested “pitching the brat out of the window.”

With his face very red, and the perspiration starting out about his mouth, Roger arose, and tried, by walking up and down the aisle, to hush the little one into quiet. Once he thought of going into the next car in quest of the missing mother,—then, thinking to himself that she surely would return ere long, he abandoned the idea, and resumed his seat with the now quiet child. And so another hour went by, and they were nearly a hundred miles from the place where the woman had left him. Had Roger been older, a suspicion of foul play would have come to him long before this; but, the soul of honor himself, he believed in everybody else, and not a doubt crossed his mind that anything was wrong until the woman who had first spoken to him began to question him again, and ask if it was his sister he was caring for so kindly. Then the story came out, and Roger felt as if smothering, when the woman exclaimed, “Why, boy, the child has been deserted. It is left on your hands. The mother will never come to claim it.”

For an instant the car and everything in it turned dark to poor Roger, who gasped, “You must be mistaken. She is in the next car, sure. Hold the baby, and I’ll find her.”

There was a moment’s hesitancy on the part of the woman,—a fear lest she, too, might be duped; but another look at the boy’s frank, ingenuous face, reassured her. There was no evil in those clear, blue eyes which met hers so imploringly, and she took the child in her arms, while he went for the missing mother,—went through the adjoining car and the next,—peering anxiously into every face, but not finding the one he sought. Then he came back, and went through the rear car, but all in vain. The dark-faced woman with the glittering eyes and strange smile, was gone! The baby was deserted and left on Roger’s hands. He understood it perfectly, and the understanding seemed suddenly to add years of discretion and experience to him. Slowly he went back to the waiting woman, and without a word took the child from her, and letting his boyish face drop over it, he whispered, “Your mother has abandoned you, little one, but I will care for you.”

He was adopting the poor forsaken child,—was accepting his awkward situation, and when that was done he reported his success. There was an ejaculation of horror and surprise on the woman’s part; a quick rising up from her seat to “do something,” or “tell somebody” of the terrible thing which had transpired before their very eyes. There was a great excitement now in the car, and the passengers crowded around the boy, who told them all he knew, and then to their suggestions as to ways and means of finding the unnatural parent, quietly replied, “I shan’t try to find her. She could not be what she ought, and the baby is better without her.”

“But what can you do with a baby,” a chorus of voices asked; and Roger replied with the air of twenty-five rather than fourteen, “I have money. I can see that she is taken care of.”

“The beginning of a very pretty little romance,” one of the younger ladies said, and then, as the conductor appeared, he was pounced upon and the story told to him, and suggestions made that he should stop the train, or telegraph back, or do something.

“What shall I stop the train for, and whom shall I telegraph to?” he asked. “It is a plain case of desertion, and the mother is miles and miles away from —— by this time. There would be no such thing as tracing her. Such things are of frequent occurrence; but I will make all necessary inquiries when I go back to-morrow, and will see that the child is given to the proper authorities, who will either get it a place, or put it in the poor-house.”

At the mention of the poor-house, Roger’s eyes, usually so mild in their expression, flashed defiantly upon the conductor. While the crowd around him had been talking, a faint doubt as to the practicability of his taking the child had crossed his mind. His father was dead, he had his education to get, and Millbank might perhaps be shut up, or let to strangers for several years to come. And what then could be done with Baby. These were his sober-second thoughts after his first indignant burst at finding the child deserted, and had some respectable, kind-looking woman then offered to take his charge from his hands, he might have given it up. But from the poor-house arrangement he recoiled in horror, remembering a sweet-faced, blue-eyed little girl, with tangled hair and milk-white feet, whom he had seen sitting on the door of the poor-house in Belvidere. She had been found in a stable, and sent to the almshouse. Nobody cared for her,—nobody but Roger, who often fed her with apples and candy, and wished there was something better for her than life in that dark dreary house among the hills. And it was to just such a life, if not a worse one, that the cruel conductor would doom the Baby left in his care.

“If I can help it, Baby shall never go to the poor-house,” Roger said; and when a lady, who admired the spirit of the boy, asked him, “Have you a mother?” he answered, “No, nor father either, but I have Hester”; and as if that settled it, he put the child on the end of the seat farthest away from the crowd, which gradually dispersed, while the conductor, after inquiring Roger’s name and address, went about his business of collecting tickets, and left him to himself.

That he ever got comfortably from Cleveland to Belvidere with his rather troublesome charge, was almost a miracle, and he would not have done so but for the many friendly hands stretched out to help him. As far as Buffalo, there were those in the car who knew of the strange incident, and who watched, and encouraged, and helped him, but after Buffalo was left behind he was wholly among strangers. Still, a boy travelling with a baby could not fail to attract attention, and many inquiries were made of him as to the whys and wherefores of his singular position. He did not think it necessary to make very lucid explanations. He said, “She is my sister; not my own, but my adopted sister, whom I am taking home;” and he blessed his good angel, which caused the child to sleep so much of the time, as he thus avoided notice and remarks which were distasteful to him. Occasionally, a thought of what Hester might say would make him a little uncomfortable. She was the only one who could possibly object,—the only one in fact who had a right to object,—for with the great shock of his father’s death Roger had been made to feel that he was now the rightful master at Millbank. His prospective inheritance had been talked of at once in the family of the clergyman, who had moved from Belvidere to St. Louis, and with whom Roger was preparing for college when the news of his loss came to him.

Mr. Morrison had said to him, “You are rich, my boy. You are owner of Millbank, but do not let your wealth become a snare. Do good with your money, and remember that a tenth, at least, belongs by right to the Lord.”

And amidst the keen pain which he felt at his father’s death, Roger had thought how much good he would do, and how he would imitate his noble friend and teacher, Mr. Morrison, who, from his scanty income, cheerfully gave more than a tenth, and still never lacked for food or raiment. That Baby was sent direct from Heaven to test his principles, he made himself believe; and by the time the mountains of Massachusetts were reached he began to feel quite composed, except on the subject of Hester. She did trouble him a little, and he wished the first meeting with her was over. With careful forethought he telegraphed for her to meet him, and then when he saw her he held the child to her at once, and hastily told her a part of his story, and felt his heart grow heavy as lead, when he saw how she shrank from the little one as if there had been pollution in its touch.

“I reckon Mrs. Walter Scott will ride a high hoss when she knows what you done,” Hester said, when at last they were in the carriage and driving toward home.

At the mention of Mrs. Walter Scott, Roger grew uneasy. He had a dread of his stylish sister-in-law, with her lofty manner and air of superiority, and he shrank nervously from what she might say.

“O Hester!” he exclaimed. “Is Helen at Millbank; and will she put on her biggest ways?”

“You needn’t be afraid of Helen Brown. ’Tain’t none of her business if you bring a hundred young ones to Millbank,” Hester said, and as she said it she came very near going over to the enemy, and espousing the cause of the poor little waif in her arms, out of sheer defiance to Mrs. Walter Scott, who was sure to snub the stranger, as she had snubbed Roger before her.

Matters were in this state when the carriage finally stopped at Millbank, and Hester insisted upon taking the child through the kitchen door, as the way most befitting for it. But Roger said no; and so it was up the broad stone steps, and across the wide piazza, and into the handsome hall, that Baby was carried upon her first entrance to Millbank.