Marian was working at her trade, and never came to the hotel except one day when Wilford was in New York, but that day sufficed for Katy to know that after herself it was Marian whom baby loved the best—Marian, who cared for it even more than Mrs. Hubbell. And Katy was glad to have it so, especially after Wilford and his mother decided that she must leave the child in New London while she made the visit to Silverton. Wilford did not like her taking so much care of it as she was inclined to do. It had grown too heavy for her to lift; it was better with Mrs. Hubbell, he said, and so to the inmates of the farm-house Katy wrote that baby was not coming. They were bitterly disappointed, for Katy’s baby had been anticipated quite as much as Katy herself, and Aunt Betsy had brought from the wood-shed chamber a cradle which nearly forty years before had rocked the deacon’s only child, the little boy, who died just as he had learned to lisp his mother’s name. As a memento of those days the cradle had been kept, Katy using it sometimes for her kittens and her dolls, until she grew too old for that, when it was put away beneath the eaves whence Aunt Betsy dragged it, scouring it with soap and sand, until it was white as snow. But it would not be needed, and with a sigh the old lady carried it back, thinking “things had come to a pretty pass when a woman who could dance and carouse till twelve o’clock at night was too weakly to take care of her child,” and feeling a very little awe of Katy who must have grown so fine a lady. But all this passed away as the time drew near when Katy was to come, and no one seemed happier than Aunt Betsy on the morning when Uncle Ephraim drove from the door, setting old Whitey into a canter, which, by the time the “race” was reached, had become a rapid trot, the old man holding up his reins and looking proudly at the oat-fed animal, speeding along so fast. He did not have long to wait this time, for the train soon came rolling across the meadow, and while his head was turned towards the car where he fancied she might be, a pair of arms was thrown impetuously round his neck, and a little figure, standing on tiptoe, almost pulled him down in its attempts to kiss him. “Uncle Eph! oh, Uncle Eph, I’ve come! I’m here!” a young voice cried; but the words the deacon would have spoken were smothered by the kisses pressed upon his lips, kisses which only came to an end when a voice said rather reprovingly, “There, Katy, that will do. You have almost strangled him.”