Mrs. Langley--if it were, indeed, Mrs. Langley?--wore a gown of warm grey shading into lilac with a lace fichu fastened by a large, handsome cameo brooch. Her parted hair was brought back so loosely as considerably to disguise the sharpness of her temples. Her eyes looked softer and her skin less sallow even in the strong light; while, most remarkable of all, the appalling hollows in her cheeks had disappeared, taking with them almost all the grimness of the mouth. And when she actually smiled, partly with her eyes yet also with her lips, Anna lost her head. She forgot all the neat, deprecatory little speeches she had prepared for every emergency save this overwhelming surprise. “O Mrs. Langley! you look simply _swell_!” she cried, dropping into a three-cornered chair that might have seemed perilously near. “And here’s little Joe, Junior, come way across the city from the Hollow to the Bowery to tell you he’s going to celebrate his first Christmas in ten days.” She held her breath. But the baby surveyed the scene calmly with that new keenness of observation of his. Apparently nothing suggested to him that it was the same wherein he had been so terrified a fortnight since. He stared coolly at the lady in the flowered chair, the lotos blossoms and birds of paradise of which hadn’t been visible in the darkened room, scrutinizing her gravely but without either recognition or disapproval. None the less, it was only with a tremendous effort of will that Anna rose and deliberately put the child into Mrs. Langley’s arms. For a moment her heart stood still. But to-day there was no scream. Little Joe did not even seek to come back to Anna. His gravity seemed, indeed, rather to lift than to deepen. He cuddled down in the stranger’s arms in a manner that implied an absent-minded desire to be comfortable while he completed his survey. For he made haste to study the bright colours of the worsted mat. Thence his gaze roved to the photograph in the frame. He looked at it hard, glanced at the lady who held him then turned to Anna. “Baa-baa!” he exclaimed suddenly, very clearly and rather dramatically and stretched out his little hand towards the picture. * * * * *