“There is no such child as Camilla Jane here,” she said.  “This is Barbara Jane.  She belongs to me.”

With that Mrs. Wheeler pulled down the shade.

Miss Rosetta had to go home.  There was nothing else for her to do.  On her way she met Mr. Patterson and told him in full the story of her wrongs.  It was all over Avonlea by night, and created quite a sensation.  Avonlea had not had such a toothsome bit of gossip for a long time.

Mrs. Wheeler exulted in the possession of Barbara Jane for six weeks, during which Miss Rosetta broke her heart with loneliness and longing, and meditated futile plots for the recovery of the baby.  It was hopeless to think of stealing it back or she would have tried to.  The hired man at the Wheeler place reported that Mrs. Wheeler never left it night or day for a single moment.  She even carried it with her when she went to milk the cows.

“But my turn will come,” said Miss Rosetta grimly.  “Camilla Jane is mine, and if she was called Barbara for a century it wouldn’t alter that fact!  Barbara, indeed!  Why not have called her Methusaleh and have done with it?”

One afternoon in October, when Miss Rosetta was picking her apples and thinking drearily about lost Camilla Jane, a woman came running breathlessly down the hill and into the yard.  Miss Rosetta gave an exclamation of amazement and dropped her basket of apples.  Of all incredible things!  The woman was Charlotte—­ Charlotte who had never set foot on the grounds of the Ellis cottage since her marriage ten years ago, Charlotte, bare-headed, wild-eyed, distraught, wringing her hands and sobbing.

Miss Rosetta flew to meet her.

“You’ve scalded Camilla Jane to death!” she exclaimed.  “I always knew you would—­always expected it!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, come quick, Rosetta!” gasped Charlotte.  “Barbara Jane is in convulsions and I don’t know what to do.  The hired man has gone for the doctor.  You were the nearest, so I came to you.  Jenny White was there when they came on, so I left her and ran.  Oh, Rosetta, come, come, if you have a spark of humanity in you!  You know what to do for convulsions—­you saved the Ellis baby when it had them.  Oh, come and save Barbara Jane!”

“You mean Camilla Jane, I presume?” said Miss Rosetta firmly, in spite of her agitation.

For a second Charlotte Wheeler hesitated.  Then she said passionately:  “Yes, yes, Camilla Jane—­any name you like!  Only come.”

Miss Rosetta went, and not a moment too soon, either.  The doctor lived eight miles away and the baby was very bad.  The two women and Jenny White worked over her for hours.  It was not until dark, when the baby was sleeping soundly and the doctor had gone, after telling Miss Rosetta that she had saved the child’s life, that a realization of the situation came home to them.

“Well,” said Miss Rosetta, dropping into an armchair with a long sigh of weariness, “I guess you’ll admit now, Charlotte Wheeler, that you are hardly a fit person to have charge of a baby, even if you had to go and steal it from me.  I should think your conscience would reproach you—­that is, if any woman who would marry Jacob Wheeler in such an underhanded fashion has a—­”