“I’m her cousin,” said Miss Rosetta, wiping her eyes, “and I have come for the baby.  I’ll take it home with me after the funeral; and, if you please, Mrs. Gordon, let me see it right away, so it can get accustomed to me.  Poor Jane!  I wish I could have got here in time to see her, she and I were such friends long ago.  We were far more intimate and confidential than ever her and Charlotte was.  Charlotte knows that, too!”

The vim with which Miss Rosetta snapped this out rather amazed Mrs. Gordon, who couldn’t understand it at all.  But she took Miss Rosetta upstairs to the room where the baby was sleeping.

“Oh, the little darling,” cried Miss Rosetta, all her old maidishness and oddity falling away from her like a garment, and all her innate and denied motherhood shining out in her face like a transforming illumination.  “Oh, the sweet, dear, pretty little thing!”

The baby was a darling—­a six-months’ old beauty with little golden ringlets curling and glistening all over its tiny head.  As Miss Rosetta hung over it, it opened its eyes and then held out its tiny hands to her with a gurgle of confidence.

“Oh, you sweetest!” said Miss Rosetta rapturously, gathering it up in her arms.  “You belong to me, darling—­never, never, to that under-handed Charlotte!  What is its name, Mrs. Gordon?”

“It wasn’t named,” said Mrs. Gordon.  “Guess you’ll have to name it yourself, Miss Ellis.”

“Camilla Jane,” said Miss Rosetta without a moment’s hesitation.  “Jane after its mother, of course; and I have always thought Camilla the prettiest name in the world.  Charlotte would be sure to give it some perfectly heathenish name.  I wouldn’t put it past her calling the poor innocent Mehitable.”

Miss Rosetta decided to stay in Charlottetown until after the funeral.  That night she lay with the baby on her arm, listening with joy to its soft little breathing.  She did not sleep or wish to sleep.  Her waking fancies were more alluring than any visions of dreamland.  Moreover, she gave a spice to them by occasionally snapping some vicious sentences out loud at Charlotte.

Miss Rosetta fully expected Charlotte along on the following morning and girded herself for the fray; but no Charlotte appeared.  Night came; no Charlotte.  Another morning and no Charlotte.  Miss Rosetta was hopelessly puzzled.  What had happened?  Dear, dear, had Charlotte taken a bad heart spell, on hearing that she, Rosetta, had stolen a march on her to Charlottetown?  It was quite likely.  You never knew what to expect of a woman who had married Jacob Wheeler!

The truth was, that the very evening Miss Rosetta had left Avonlea Mrs. Jacob Wheeler’s hired man had broken his leg and had had to be conveyed to his distant home on a feather bed in an express wagon.  Mrs. Wheeler could not leave home until she had obtained another hired man.  Consequently, it was the evening after the funeral when Mrs. Wheeler whisked up the steps of the Gordon house and met Miss Rosetta coming out with a big white bundle in her arms.