There was one thing that puzzled Mr Robins extremely, and this was Jane Sands' behaviour. He was convinced that she had been a party to the trick that had been played off on him, and she was evidently full of some secret trouble and anxiety, for which he could only account by attributing it to her disappointment about the baby, and perhaps distrust of the care that would be taken of it by others. Mr Robins often discovered her in tears, and she was constantly going out for hours at a time, having always hitherto been almost too much of a stay-at-home. He suspected that these lengthened absences meant visits to the Grays' cottage, and that baby-worship that women find so delightful; but he found out accidentally that she had never been near the cottage since the baby's arrival, and when he made an excuse of sending a book by her to Bill to get her to go there, she met the boy at the bottom of the lane, and did not go on to the cottage. As to what he had overheard the men saying about the gypsy girl, he felt sure that Jane had only said this to put people on the wrong scent, though, certainly, deception of any sort was very unlike her. Once he found her sitting up late at night at work on some small frocks and pinafores, and he thought that at last the subject was coming to the surface, and especially as she coloured up and tried to hide the work when he came in. 'Busy?' he said. 'You seem very hard at work. Who are you working for?' 'A baby,' she stammered, 'a baby----that my sister's taking care of.' She was so red and confused that he felt sure she was saying what was not true, but he forgave her for the sake of the baby for whom he firmly believed the work was being done, and who, to be sure, when he saw it in Mrs Gray's arms, looked badly in want of clothes more fitted to its size than Bill's old pinafores. He stood for a minute fingering the pink, spotted print of infantile simplicity of pattern, and listening to the quick click, click, of her needle as it flew in and out; but it was not till he had turned away and was half out of the kitchen, that she began a request that had been on the tip of her tongue all the time, but which she had not ventured to bring out while he stood at the table. 'I was going to ask--if you 'd no objection--seeing that they're no good to any one'---- Now it was coming out, and he turned with an encouraging smile: 'Well, what is it?' 'There are some old baby-clothes put away in a drawer up-stairs. They 're rough dried, and I've kept an eye on them, and took them out now and then to see as the moth didn't get in them'---- 'Yes?' 'Well, sir--this baby that I'm working for is terrible short of clothes, and I thought I might take a few of them for her'---- She did not look at him once as she spoke, or she might have been encouraged by the look on his face, which softened into a very benignant, kindly expression.