"There ith," Pattie Batch gasped, in ecstasy. "Is!" John Fairmeadow scornfully mocked. "Huh!" Pattie Batch caught John Fairmeadow by the two lapels of his coat--and she stood on tiptoe--and she wouldn't let John Fairmeadow turn his head away--(as if John Fairmeadow cared to evade those round, glowing eyes!)--and she looked into his gray eyes with a bewitching conglomeration of hope, amusement, curiosity and adoring childish affection. "There ith, too," she chuckled, her lisp getting the better of her. "Yeth, there ith. I know _you_, Mithter Fairmeadow." John Fairmeadow ridiculously failed to smother a chuckle in a growl. "Doth it bite?" Pattie Batch inquired, maliciously feigning a terrific fright. "Nonsense!" John Fairmeadow declared; "it hasn't a tooth in its head." He added, with one eye closed, and palms lifted: "But--aha!--just you wait and _see_." "Well," Pattie Batch drawled, "I th'pose it'th a turkey. It'th thertainly _thome_thin' t' eat," she declared. "Good _enough_ to eat, I bet you!" John Fairmeadow agreed, with the air of having concealed in that veritable big basket the sweetest morsel in all the world. "Ith it a chicken?" "Nonsense!" said John Fairmeadow; "it's fa-a-a-ar more delicious than chicken. Hi, there, Poll Pry!" he roared, and just in time; "keep your hands off." "Is it anything for the house?" "No, indeed; the house is for _it_." Pattie Batch scowled in perplexity. "The back yard, too," John Fairmeadow added; "and don't you forget that this whole place--and all the world--belongs to just what's in that basket." "I'm sure," poor Pattie Batch mused, scratching her curls in bewilderment, "I can't guess what it _could_ be." Both were now staring at the basket; and at that very moment the blanket covering--_stirred_! "Ith a dog!" Pattie Batch exclaimed. "Dog!" the outraged John Fairmeadow roared. "Nothing of the sort! No _ma'am_!" Pattie Batch clasped her hands. "It ith, too!" she cried. "I thaw it move." "It is _not_!" "Ith a kitten, then." "It is _not_ a kitten!" Thereupon--while the Shadow, by whom John Fairmeadow had been dogged that night, now peered with acute attention through a break in the frost on the window-pane--thereupon, without any warning save a second slight movement of the blanket, a sound--and not by any means a growl--the thing was certainly not a dog--a sound proceeded from the depths of the basket. Pattie Batch jumped away. "Well, well!" cried John Fairmeadow; "what's the row?" Row, indeed! Pattie Batch was gone white; and she swayed a little, and shivered, too, and clenched her little hands to restrain her amazing hope. "Oh," she moaned, at last, far short of breath enough, "tell me quick: ith it--ith it a--a----" John Fairmeadow threw back the blanket in a most dramatic fashion; and there, wrapped in the neglected fawn-skin cloak, all dimpled and smiling, lay-- THE BABY! "By George!" screamed Pattie Batch; "it _ith_ a baby!"