The old woman looked at all the preparation dimly, but presently she really did pick up the pen, and squaring herself at the table made a few trembling strokes. “My baby child,” she scrawled, the line running slantingly down the paper. “My little baby,” she attempted again and then, staring at the words, she broke down in tears. “I can’t do it,” she wept. “I can’t. I can’t get beyond ‘My baby child.’ I just think of her like that. She don’t seem to me like a grown person, an’ it’s all I can think to say.” “That’s plenty: that’s all she’ll need,” Julie comforted her. “I’ll write her a letter and tell her all about everything, and put in what you’ve written.” “Well,” the old woman consented shakingly, “well, tell her--Oh, tell her please to come! Tell her not to be mad at me.” And then all at once the secret of the old woman’s heart burst forth. “She’s mad at me about something. She won’t come. I’ve written and written--of course I have. But she don’t even answer. She don’t send a word. She’s gone back on me.” She looked up at Julie, her old face all distorted and twitching. “Don’t tell--don’t you tell any of these onery folks--but she’s gone back on me. She don’t ever write nor nothin’. Not even Christmas time. I ain’t told on her. I’ve kep’ it all to myself, here in my breast--but it’s erbout killed me. All I’ve got in the world! All--” The words fell into sobs. “But she _will_ come now!” Julie promised with poignant sympathy. “She just doesn’t understand. But I’ll write so she’ll see she must come.” “Well--you write,” the other agreed with a pathetic confidence in Julie. “Maybe she’ll come for you. Tell her--Oh, tell her her old Tannie is sick an’ wants her. ‘Tannie,’ that was what she always called me: it was as near as she could come to saying ‘Aunt Annie’ when she was little.” Julie did write. She did not know the niece’s name, and was afraid to ask, dreading a return of that sly suspicious look that was always brought out on Miss Fogg’s face when she questioned her too closely about anything. So she began the letter “Madam,” and when she came to the signing of her own name, she hesitated. She had never yet brought herself to write, “Julie Freeman.” She had always managed in some way to avoid doing so. For all that she had said that the name was no lie, she could not make herself write it. But her own name she dared not put. So in the end she signed it, “From a Friend.” She wrote urgently, and enclosed the sheet on which Miss Fogg’s trembling words, “My baby child,” went slanting down the paper. Then she sealed the envelope and stamped it. “Now then,” she said with an assumption of confidence that she did not feel, “what’s her address?” To her despair she was met by the old crafty look in Miss Fogg’s eyes. “That’s all right--that’s all right,” the old woman said with dignity. “Just lay it there, an’ I’ll back it when I git ready.”