“Why don’t you rest a little, and take baby outdoors in her new coat?” Celia suggested.  “Sewing is such wearisome work, if one isn’t used to it.”

So Charlotte and her charge gladly went out.  A neighbour had lent an old baby sled, and in it Miss Ellen Donohue, snuggled to the chin in the warmest of garments and wrappings, took her first airing since the night, a week before, when she had been brought home in Doctor Churchill’s arms.

She was a shy but happy baby, and had already won all hearts.  Nobody was willing to begin the steps necessary to place her in any of the institutions designed for cases like hers.  Charlotte, indeed, would not hear of it; and even the practical John Lansing, who had learned to figure the family finances pretty closely since he himself had become the wage-earner, succumbed to the touch of baby fingers on his face and the glance of a pair of eyes like forget-me-nots.

As for Captain Rayburn, he was the baby’s devoted slave at all times, his most jealous rival being Dr. Andrew Churchill, who was constantly inventing excuses for coming in for a frolic with Baby Ellen.

“If the doctor could look in on us now,” observed Mrs. Fields, suddenly, in the middle of the afternoon, when Charlotte was again bravely trying to distinguish herself at tasks in which she was by no means an adept, “he’d be put out with me for having this party a day when he was away.  He sets great store by anything that looks like a lot of people at home.”

“Is he one of a large family?” Celia asked.

“He was two years ago.  Since then he’s lost a brother and a sister and his mother.  His father died five years ago.  He has a married brother in Japan, and an unmarried one in South Africa.  There ain’t anybody in the old home now.  It broke up when his mother died, two years ago.  He hasn’t got over that—­not a bit.  She was going to come and live with him here.  It was a town where she used to visit a good deal, and since he couldn’t settle near the old home, because it wasn’t a good field for young doctors, she was willing to come here with him.  That’s why he’s here now, though I suppose it don’t begin to be as advantageous a place for him as it would be in the city itself.  He thought a terrible lot of his mother, Andy did.  Seems as if he wanted to please her now as much as ever.  And he has some pretty homesick times, now and then, though he doesn’t show it much.”

It was the first time the doctor’s housekeeper had been so communicative, and her three hearers listened with deep interest, although they asked few questions, made only one or two kindly comments, and did not express half the sympathy they felt.  Only Captain Rayburn, thoughtfully staring out of the window, gave voice to a sentiment for which both his nieces, although they said nothing in reply, inwardly thanked him.

“Doctor Churchill is a rare sort of fellow,” he said.  “Doctor Forester considers him most promising, I know.  But better than that, he is one whose personality alone will always be the strongest part of his influence over his patients, winning them from despair to courage—­how, they can’t tell.  And the man who can add to the sum total of the courage of the human race has done for it what it very much needs.”