“I am always better after talking with her,” Katy said, “And I have a strong presentiment that she can do me good.”

“Shall you tell her?” Helen asked in some surprise; and Katy replied, “perhaps I may.  I’ll see.”

An hour later, and Katy, up in Marian’s room, sat with her hands clasped together upon the table, listening intently while Marian spoke of a letter received a few days since from an old friend who had worked with her at Madam ——­’s, and to whom she had been strongly attached, keeping up a correspondence with her after her marriage and removal to New London, in Connecticut; and whose little child, born two months before Katy’s, was dead, and the mother, finding her home so desolate, had written, beseeching Marian to come to her for the remainder of the winter, adding in conclusion:  “If you know of any little homeless baby, bring it to me in place of mine, which God has taken.  I shall thus be doing good, and in part forget my sorrow.”

Instantly Helen and Katy glanced at each other, the same thought flashing upon both, and finding form in Katy’s vehement outburst, “If Mrs. Hubbell would take baby, and Marian would go, too, I should be so happy.”

In a few moments Marian had heard Katy’s trouble—­struggling hard to fight back the giddy faintness she felt stealing over her, as she thought of nursing Wilford Cameron’s child.

“Write to her, Marian—­write to-day—­now, before I go,” Katy continued, clasping Marian’s hand, with an expression which, more than aught else won Marian Hazelton’s consent to a plan which seemed so strange.

“Yes, I will write,” she answered; “I will tell Amelia what you desire.”

“But, Marian, you, too, must go.  I’ll trust baby with you.  Say, Marian, will you take care of my darling?”

It was hard to refuse, with those great, wistful, pleading eyes looking so earnestly into hers; but Marian must have time to consider.  She had thought of going to New London to open a shop, and if she did she should board with Mrs. Hubbell, and so be with the child.  She would decide when the answer came to the letter.

This was all the encouragement she would give; but it was enough to change the whole nature of Katy’s feelings, and her face looked bright and cheerful as she tripped down the stairway, talking to Helen of what seemed to both like a direct interposition of Providence, and what she was sure would please Wilford quite as well as the farmhouse up the river.

“Surely he will yield to me in this,” she said.  Nor was she wrong; for glad of an opportunity to make some concessions, and still in the main have his own way, Wilford raised no objection to the plan as communicated to him by Katy, when, at an earlier hour than usual, he came home to dinner, drawn thither by a remembrance of the face which had haunted him the entire day, and bringing as a peace offering to both wife and sister—­a new book for the one, and for the other a set of handsome coral, which he had heard her admire only the week before.