Here Providence stepped in. One morning when she was dressing she heard a peculiar little wailing cry. She listened. The cry was repeated. She listened again, but could not locate the sound. Then, thinking she might be mistaken, she continued with her dressing; but again that piercing wail was borne to her ears. She opened her window and then she heard it distinctly--a baby's cry. She listened in amazement. There was no baby on the place except the gardener's, and his cottage was too far from the big house to have his children's wails heard in that place given over to aristocratic quiet. Drusilla tried to see around the comer of the house, but she could not; so she rang for Jeanne. "Jane, I heard a baby cry. Go and find out where it is," she said. Jeanne was gone a long time, it seemed to Drusilla; and then she returned, with big frightened eyes, followed by the butler carrying a large basket. He stopped at the door. "Come in, James. What you standing there for? What you got?" Just then the wailing cry came from the basket, and Drusilla dropped the brush in her hand. "For the land's sake, what's in the basket? Come here!" James gingerly deposited the basket upon a chair. "It's a baby, ma'am--a live baby." "Well, upon my soul! Of course it is! You wouldn't expect it to not be alive. Let's see it." She went over to the basket and looked down at the lively little bundle that seemed to be protesting in its feeble way against the injustice of the world in leaving it at a chance doorstep. Drusilla looked at it admiringly. "Why, ain't it cunning, the pore little thing! It's done up warm. How'd it get here?" "I don't know, ma'am. It must 'a' been left early this morning after the gates was opened. I'll ask the gardeners if they saw any one come in." "Never mind now, James. Here's a letter. It'll tell us all about it. Where are my glasses, Jane?" Drusilla put on her glasses and read the inscription on the letter. "_Miss Drusilla Doane_. Well, they know my name." She tore open the envelope and read aloud: "I read in the paper that you have no one and are alone and rich. My baby has no one but me, and I can't get work. Won't you take him? His name is John--that's all." "JOHN'S MOTHER." Drusilla pushed the glasses up on her forehead and used a slang expression that almost drew a smile from solemn James. "Now _what_ do you know about that!" She looked at James as if he should have an answer, and he said: "I'm sure, Miss Doane, I don't know anything about it at all." Drusilla looked down at the baby in the basket, and again at the letter, not knowing what to do; but, the little wail again rising, she reached down to take the baby into her arms, and found it securely pinned into the basket. "Poor little mother!" she said. "She didn't want you to get cold." As she took out the safety-pins and lifted the baby into her arms, she dislodged a bottle of milk.