“Don’t take her away,” it said.

Leaving the children to entertain each other on the sidewalk they enlarged the hole from which the new baby had crawled, and pushed their way through it.  On the ground behind the hedge, and hidden from the sidewalk by its thick twigs lay a young woman, so pale that she frightened the girls.

“Don’t take the baby away.  I’ll feel better in a little while.  She crept off from me.”

“How did you get here?” asked Ethel Brown.

“I came out from New York to look for work in the country.  I felt so sick I lay down here.”

“Did you get any work?”

A slight movement of the head indicated that she had not.  The Ethels consulted each other by disturbed glances.  There was no hospital nearer than Glen Point, and indeed, the woman seemed so ill that they did not see how she could reach the hospital even in the trolley.

As they stood silent and perplexed the honk of a motor roused the almost unconscious woman.

“Is the baby in the street?” she inquired frantically.

Ethel Brown crushed her way through the hedge, and found that the children were still on the sidewalk, but were so near its edge that the driver of the car had tooted to warn them back.  To her delight she saw that the driver was Grandfather Emerson.  She waved her hand to stop him.

“You’re a great caretaker!” he cried.  “Why do you leave Elisabeth to look after herself in this fashion?  And who’s her friend?”

Ethel climbed into the machine beside him and told of the discovery that the girls had just made.  Mr. Emerson drew the car alongside the curb and jumped out with anxiety written on his face.  The hole in the hedge was too small for him to push through so he ran around the end, and approached the prostrate form of the woman.

Her eyes were closed and she lay so still that Ethel Blue, who was rubbing her hands, shook her head as she glanced up gratefully at the new arrival.

“What’s this, what’s this?” asked Mr. Emerson in his full, rich voice.  Its mere sound seemed to carry comfort to the poor creature lying at his feet.  He knelt beside her.  “Hungry, eh?” he asked.  “We’ll see about that right off.  Can you eat these cookies?” He took a thin tin box out of his pocket and opened it.  “I have a little granddaughter named Ethel Brown who insists on my keeping cookies in my pocket all the time so that I can eat them when I’m driving.  See if you can take a bite of this.”

A fluttering hand took the cooky and put it between the pale lips.

Helped by the girls the woman struggled to her feet and stood wavering before she tried to take a step.  She was a young woman with very black hair and gray-blue eyes and a face that was meant to be unlined and pretty and not gaunt with hunger and furrowed by anxiety.

“You’re very good,” she whispered feebly.

Supported on each side she managed to reach the sidewalk, where she looked about wildly for her baby.  An expression that was sad but infinitely relieved came over her features when she saw the two children sitting in the gravel of the walk filling their tiny hands with pebbles.