“Don’t worry,” said Evan the cheerful; “the town authorities will be only too glad to be relieved of the charge of the waifs, as a matter of course, but at least an attempt will be made to find where they came from; and though there’s nothing to prevent Martha’s having them christened, the matter of legal adoption will require more time, and something may turn up. Don’t you realize, Barbara, that it is a most unusual thing for children a year old or more to be abandoned? Foundlings are usually a few hours, or at most a few weeks, old. It’s to the credit of human nature that few of even the lowest people will give up their cubs when once they’ve learned to know them.” “Perhaps, however, these are orphans, and it is the people who have them second-hand that wish to get rid of them,” I said. “That may be; but there was a certain method in the place chosen for leaving them that makes me think near-by people, possibly in Bridgeton, had a hand in it; if so, it will leak out.” So, angry as I was at Martha’s total lack of common sense, but remembering all she had been to me and my boys in the past dozen years, I made up a bundle of such things as the needy hospital had not claimed, and after breakfast took it up to the chicken farm, where I found that father had preceded me. It is useless to tell a woman over thirty that men are lacking in curiosity! Father asked two questions to my one. However, he pronounced Albert and Victoria sound of limb and lungs, but seemed to regard the whole matter as a joke, even going so far as to admire their pronounced Guelph noses, and was not as judicious as I had expected in the advice he gave to Martha. The doings of the next three weeks I will give as recorded in my Experience Book. It had been a long time since anything had occurred worthy of record, so I resorted to it to relieve my feelings. _August 9._ The investigation as to the origin of Albert and Victoria has proved a complete failure; no one can be found who saw a horse and wagon driven by a strange, small, dark man on the day of their arrival or the night before. Already Martha’s neat cottage has suffered a change, and the sitting-room looked this morning like a ship’s deck swept by a hurricane; all objects that could be hung up or stowed away on mantel-shelf or in cupboard had been removed, and the chairs were huddled together in a corner. The twins move about in a very lively manner: Victoria, creeping on her hands and right knee, uses her left leg as an oar; while Albert, not content with this method, pulls himself slowly upon his feet and totters forward a few steps on a run, only to topple over, catching at anything within reach. This morning, according to Effie, he caught at the cloth that covered the pan of evenly risen bread dough that Martha was about to mould into loaves, upset it, falling backward into the wreck that made a most comfortable air-cushion.