“She seems to accept you for a mother all right,” he commented, as Charlotte held the cup to the baby’s lips, cuddling her in a blanket meanwhile.  But the girl’s eyes filled at this, remembering poor Annie, and Jeff added hastily, “What’ll happen if she wakes up and cries in the night?  Babies usually do, don’t they?”

“Annie has always said Ellen didn’t, much, and she’s getting to sleep so late I hope she won’t to-night.  I don’t feel equal to telling the others what I’ve done till morning,” and Charlotte smiled rather faintly.  Now that she had the baby at home she was beginning to wonder what Lanse and Celia would say.

“Never mind.  I’ll stand by you.  You’re all right, whatever you do—­if I did think you were rather off your head at first,” promised Jeff, sturdily.  He was never known to fail Charlotte in an emergency.

Whether it was the strange surroundings or something wrong about the last meal of the day cannot be stated, but Baby Ellen did wake up.  It was at three o’clock in the morning that Charlotte, who, excited by the strangeness of the situation, had but just fallen asleep, was roused by a small wail.

The baby seemed not to know her in the trailing blue kimono, with her two long curly braids swinging over her shoulders, and in spite of all that Charlotte could do, the infantile anguish of spirit soon filled the house.

Charlotte walked the floor with her, alternately murmuring consolation and singing the lullabies of her own childhood; but the uproar continued.  It is astonishing what an amount of disturbance one small pair of lungs can produce.  It was not long before the anxious nurse, listening with both ears for evidences that the family were aroused, heard the tap of Celia’s crutches, which the invalid had just learned to use.  And almost at the same moment Lanse’s door opened and shut with a bang.

“Here they come!” murmured Charlotte, trying distractedly to hush the baby by means which were never known to have that effect upon a startled infant in a strange house.

Her door swung open.  Celia stood on the threshold, her eyes wide with alarm.  Lanse, lightly costumed in pink-and-white pajamas, gazed over her shoulder.

“Charlotte Birch!” cried Celia, and words failed her.  But Lanse was ready of speech.

“What the dickens does this mean?” he inquired, wrathfully.  “Have we become an orphanage?  I thought I heard singular sounds just after I got to bed.  Is there any good reason why the family shouldn’t be informed of what strange intentions you may have in your brain before you carry them out?  Whose youngster is it, and what are you doing with it here?”

Charlotte’s lips were seen to move, but the baby’s fright had received such an accession from the appearance of two more unknown beings in the room that nothing could be distinguished.  What Charlotte said was, “Please go away!  I’ll tell you in the morning.”  But the visitors, failing to catch the appeal, not only did not go away, but moved nearer.