I don't know why,--perhaps because she was very short of hands just then, perhaps because the work was light, but the matron did select Helen for Robin's nurse. The work, as she knew, was very little; the child was scarcely ill at all; but this step settled his fate. If Helen had loved him before, she loved him so passionately now that she could not do without him. It came into her head to steal Robin from the workhouse, and bring him up as her own child. When she left that dreary abode, he should also leave it; and she would toil and labour for him, and he should be to her in the place of her dead baby. CHAPTER IV. _THE WOMAN WAS GROWING HUMAN._ It was a daring scheme, and one very difficult to carry into execution; but she was a daring woman and a cunning one, and she went warily to work. Such a thing as a pauper woman stealing an unknown orphan child from the workhouse had never been heard of; such a case had certainly never been brought before the guardians; their difficulty was not how to secure and keep children, but how to dispose of those they had got. Still Helen knew that the law was stringent, and that it would be utterly useless for her to ask for Robin. And yet she _must_ have him. She set her wits to work. Robin's illness was favourable to her designs, otherwise she could never have carried them out. It so happened that at this time the workhouse infirmary in David's Row was undergoing considerable alterations, and was in consequence more or less in a state of confusion. There was no regular ward fitted up for infectious cases, which, as a rule, were instantly removed to the hospitals; but Robin being a baby and a favourite, and his illness being very slight, the matron put him into a small room apart from the rest of the building, and this room he and his nurse had quite to themselves. He was quickly well again, but was not allowed to return to the other wards on account of infection; and Helen, now perfectly recovered herself, remained also to nurse him. The woman was growing human and happy, when one day, after the doctor's visit, she was told that she would receive her discharge that day week. She would have been sent away sooner but for her services to the boy. Then the design she had only hitherto thought of calmly, and in the distance, came close. In a week she was to go, and Robin must go too--she would not stir from the workhouse without him; no, no power should drag her from the child. She was sorely puzzled how to act, and in this difficulty, had she known anything really of God, she would have certainly asked Him to help her; as it was, however, she lay awake all night thinking out her own plan, which was quite bold and clever enough. When she had thought it well out, she grew calm and played again with Robin. No fear of her courage failing her in carrying it out. Helen had a cousin, the young woman who used to share her attic; and this woman also had a child--a child about Robin's age.