had not seemed so off, as she expressed it, and evincing no pleasure at Katy’s expected visit.  He had been polite to Wilford, had kept him at Linwood, taking him to and from the depot, but even Wilford had thought him changed, telling Katy how very sober and grave he had become, rarely smiling, and not seeming to care to talk unless it were about his profession or on some religious topic.  And Morris was greatly changed.  The wound which in most hearts would have healed by this time had grown deeper with each succeeding year, while from all he heard he felt sure that Katy’s marriage was a sad mistake, wishing sometimes that he had spoken, and so perhaps have saved her from the life in which she could not be wholly free.  “She would be happier with me,” he had said, with a sad smile to Helen, when once she told him of some things which she had not mentioned elsewhere, and there were great tears in Morris’ eyes, tears of which he was not ashamed when Helen spoke of Katy’s distress, and the look which crept into her face when baby was taken away.  When Morris first heard of the baby he had hoped he might love Katy less; that she would seem to him as more a wife and less a girl, but she did not, and there were times when the silent doctor, living alone at Linwood, felt that his grief was too great to bear.  But the deep, dark waters were always forded safely, and Morris’ faith in God prevailed, so that only a dull, heavy pain remained, with the consciousness that it was no sin to remember Katy as she was remembered now.  Oh, how he had longed to see her, and yet how he had dreaded it, lest poor weak human flesh should prove inadequate to the sight.  But she was coming home; Providence had ordered that and he accepted it, looking eagerly for the time when he should see her again, but repressing his eagerness, so that not even Helen suspected how impatient he was for the day of her return.  Four weeks she had been at the Pequot House in New London, occupying a little cottage and luxuriating in the joy of having her child with her almost every day.  Country air and country nursing had wrought wonders in the baby, which had grown so beautiful and bright that it was no longer in Wilford’s way save as it took too much of Katy’s time, and made her careless for the gay crowd at the hotel.

Marian was working at her trade, and never came to the hotel except one day when Wilford was in New York, but that day sufficed for Katy to know that after herself it was Marian whom baby loved the best—­Marian, who cared for it even more than Mrs. Hubbell.  And Katy was glad to have it so, especially after Wilford and his mother decided that she must leave the child in New London while she made the visit to Silverton.

Wilford did not like her taking so much care of it as she was inclined to do.  It had grown too heavy for her to lift; it was better with Mrs. Hubbell, he said, and so to the inmates of the farmhouse Katy wrote that baby was not coming.