Thereafter for many days Anna Miller had an additional burden upon her shoulders--the burden of Alice Lorraine’s mystery. The change in Alice which was inexplicable to Anna but which seemed painfully obvious, she tried to keep from the knowledge of others as she endeavored to cover up her secret visits to the cottage she and her mother had occupied. She did this cheerfully and willingly, but her heart was heavy. For Alice did not seem happy at all. She seemed nervous and apprehensive, so that Anna feared the secret she was helping her to conceal was anything but a pleasant one. But for this, Anna would have been serene. For Mrs. Langley’s unexpected behaviour in respect to the baby troubled her less and less as the days passed. She still expected to hand the child over to the household at the parsonage on some fine day, but she was ready to wait. Indeed, but for the fact that the care of little Joe during school hours fell upon her mother, she would have been glad to wait indefinitely. And as it was, the girl had never been so happy with anyone or anything as she was with this forlorn baby orphan. No one shared her enthusiasm in any considerable measure. Alice Lorraine went into ecstasies over little Joe by fits and starts and then forgot all about him. Mrs. Lorraine was becoming attached to him, and Anna’s father and the boys took kindly to him. But Mrs. Miller disapproved thoroughly of the whole affair,--the only instance of her disapproval Anna had known since her return home. And she remained unresigned to her part of minding little Joe when Anna was at school, though he slept a good part of the time and for the rest was, she had to own, as little trouble as a child could be. She even confessed, when pressed, that he was hardly more bother than a kitten. This was not exaggeration. Joe, Junior, occasioned little trouble. On the other hand, he paid as little in the coin of babyhood for such trouble as he gave as could any human being at his interesting age. Not only was he not irresistible but he was quite negligible, unless, indeed, he aroused vague irritation in the mind of the beholder because of his utter want of attractiveness. He was thin and scrawny and sallow; his head was too big for his emaciated little body, and his pale-coloured eyes too big for his mite of an old man’s face. His feet and hands were ugly claws, his legs mere sticks--one would as quickly have looked for dimples in the living skeleton of the circus. He had a mere wisp of tow-coloured hair and never showed the teeth he possessed. He never smiled, never, indeed, looked other than woe-begone. Though he never cried out and seldom whined or whimpered, he always seemed to want sadly something that was never by any chance what was proffered him.