But it was fast. He had told Anna not to lock the door behind her at choir rehearsal, but perhaps she felt that this was different. He unlocked it and went in making a racket and calling her name lest she be frightened. She was not to be found, however. The audience room looked exactly as it had when he had left it early in the afternoon except that now twilight had fallen upon it. He went to the organ loft, but saw no traces of anyone having been there. And he began to wonder if he had been mistaken. Perhaps he hadn’t heard anything. But he knew he had. Perhaps it had come from elsewhere? It had sounded like the organ, but it was rather low and soft for that great organ. Still, where could it have come from? Shaking his head, Seth Miller returned home, his errand forgotten. That evening as he was about to start for the church, he asked Anna what she had done with the key to the vestry door. “It’s there on the nail, Pa,” she said, pointing to the place where it should have been--and where it was! Too confounded for speech, he took it down, handled and put it back. Then he went out without a word. He decided to say nothing to Anna until next day. But the next day brought wild excitement to the house in the form of an invitation for Anna to bring little Joe to the parsonage on Saturday, and he forgot the lesser in the greater. The excitement was great, too, at Miss Penny’s, and Joe, Junior, acquired a new importance. Anna consulted Mrs. Lorraine and Miss Penny, and even Mrs. Miller showed an interest in the baby’s toilette for the occasion. But no one guessed how painfully the girl made her preparations, for she expected to return without the child. She sang as she flew about, and laughed at the boys who were working hard in all their spare time to teach the baby to talk before he should visit the parsonage. Freddy began with _cat_ and _rat_, those being the words he first learned to read. Frank, the older and wiser, experimented with bow-wow, moo-moo and other onomatopoetic syllables, but with equal unsuccess. The baby wouldn’t even say _O_. On Saturday afternoon, Seth Miller himself drove them over to the parsonage, Miss Penny having loaned her pony. Mr. Langley came to the gate and proudly and rather spectacularly bore the baby into the house as if it were a royal infant. He removed his little bonnet and cloak with surprising deftness, admiring the swan’s down border of the hood as if it were ermine. Big Bell stood at the end of the passage with a wistful expression on her homely face and Anna tiptoed past Mrs. Langley’s door to let her see the baby first.