"You must let me help you, and them," she answered impulsively; "and thank you again ten thousand times, for all you have done for my little Baba." The short, sharp illness which had brought Cicely flying down from town at a moment's notice, had safely run its course, and Baba was now enjoying a convalescence, in which she was petted and spoilt to her heart's content, petted to an extent that might have done harm to a less sweet and wholesome character. But the love that had wrapped the child round from her first hours of life, had only made her sunny sweetness of nature more sweet and sunny, and she was a very captivating patient. Mrs. Nairne vied with Cicely and Christina in, as she phrased it, "cosseting" up the precious little dear, and the village folk who had learnt to love the small girl in her red cloak, with her dainty face and gracious manners, showered gifts and enquiries upon the invalid. Very quaint presents found their way to Baba's bedside. A plump young chicken from good Mrs. Smithers, whose poultry yard had caused the child the keenest delight; eggs from Widow Jones, who cherished a few rakish fowls in her strip of back garden; girdle cakes, most fearsome for digestive purposes, from Mrs. Madden, the blacksmith's wife, whilst the blacksmith himself brought a horse shoe, polished to the brightness of a silver mirror, for the little lady who had loved to stand beside the flaming forge, watching the sparks fly up, as his huge hammer struck the anvil. Children came shyly with bunches of the berries and coloured leaves that still hung in the hedges, and a very ancient dame whose garden boasted of two equally ancient apple-trees, proudly toddled up to Mrs. Nairne's door with the largest and rosiest of her apples, for the "pretty little lady." "Baba seems to have made them all love her," Cicely said to Christina, tears standing in her blue eyes, when she returned from interviewing the old lady of the apples; "everybody who comes, speaks of her as if she were an old and valued friend." "She has made friends with every living soul," Christina answered; "she is the most loving little child, and so tender-hearted over everything that is hurt or unhappy. I don't wonder everyone here adores her." "Dr. Fergusson seems to think she will soon be quite well, and we must move her home for a few days, and then to Bramwell."