“There’s a dear child in this ward,” said Mrs. Morton as they stood for a moment in the door looking about the room.  “He was picked up in the street about a week ago, hurt by a passing vehicle, and brought here.  We have not been able to learn anything about him.”

Edith’s heart gave a sudden leap, but she held it down with all the self-control she could assume, trying to be calm.

“Where is he?” she asked, in a voice so altered from its natural tone that Mrs. Morton turned and looked at her in surprise.

“Over in that corner,” she answered, pointing down the room.

Edith started forward, Mrs. Morton at her side.

“Here he is,” said the latter, pausing at a bed on which child with fair face, blue eyes and golden hair was lying.  A single glance sent the blood back to Edith’s heart.  A faintness came over her; everything grew dark.  She sat down to keep from falling.

As quickly as possible and by another strong effort of will she rallied herself.

“Yes,” she said, in a faint undertone in which was no apparent interest, “he is a dear little fellow.”

As she spoke she laid her hand softly on the child’s head, but not in a way to bring any response.  He looked at her curiously, and seemed half afraid.

Meanwhile, a child occupying a bed only a few feet off had started up quickly on seeing Edith, and now sat with his large brown eyes fixed eagerly upon her, his lips apart and his hands extended.  But Edith did not notice him.  Presently she got up from beside the bed and was turning away when the other child, with a kind of despairing look in his face, cried out,

“Lady, lady! oh, lady!”

The voice reached Edith’s ears.  She turned, and saw the face of Andy.  Swift as a flash she was upon him, gathering him in her arms and crying out, in a wild passion of joy that could not be repressed,

“Oh, my baby! my baby! my boy! my boy!  Bless God! thank God! oh, my baby!”

Startled by this sudden outcry, the resident physician and two nurses who were in the ward hurried down the room to see what it meant.  Edith had the child hugged tightly to her bosom, and resisted all their efforts to remove him.

“My dear madam,” said the doctor, “you will do him some harm if you don’t take care.”

“Hurt my baby?  Oh no, no!” she answered, relaxing her hold and gazing down upon Andy as she let him fall away from her bosom.  Then lifting her eyes to the physician, her face so flooded with love and inexpressible joy that it seemed like some heavenly transfiguration, she murmured, in a low voice full of the deepest tenderness,

“Oh no.  I will not do my baby any harm.”

“My dear, dear friend,” said Mrs. Morton, recovering from the shock of her first surprise and fearing that Edith had suddenly lost her mind, “you cannot mean what you say;” and she reached down for the child and made a movement as if she were going to lift him away from her arms.