The night after Mabella’s visit to Ann Serrup, Lanty was at home, and seated before the open door, was coaxing plaintive melodies from out the old fiddle, which having been regarded as a godless and profane instrument for several generations in his father’s family, had at last fallen upon happy days and into appreciative hands, for Lanty Lansing could bring music out of any instrument, although, of course, he had never been taught a note. The old fiddle under Lanty’s curving bow whispered and yearned and moaned and pleaded—the dusk fell and still he played on and on—till Mabella, having put Dorothy to bed, came out to sit upon the doorstep before his chair, resting her head against his knee. The fiddle was put down. For a little the two sat in silence. Afterwards the scene came back to them and helped them when they had sore need.
“Lanty,” said Mabella, “will you do something for me to-morrow?”
“Of course I’ll do it; but I can’t, can I, unless I have some slight idea.”
“Well, you are right there,” she said; “I thought you were going to object! Well, you know Ann Serrup?”
“I know her, yes; a precious bad lot she is too!” Lanty’s face clouded.
“Lanty, dear, wasn’t that just a man’s word? She’s a woman, you know, and Lanty, I’ve been to see her, and it’s all so forlorn; and she’s so—so—oh, Lanty! And Vashti was there and she asked if her baby was _deformed_, fancy that! And it was the poor little scraps of clothes which made the child look queer. But it was the sort of queerness which makes you cry, and Lanty, I said I would send her some patterns, and you’ll take them over to-morrow morning, won’t you?”
“But, girlie,” he began; just then Dorothy gave a sleepy cry.
Lanty and Mabella rose as by one impulse and went into the twilight of the room where the child’s cot was. But their baby slept serenely and smiled as she slept.
“The angels are whispering to her,” said Mabella. The old sweet mother fable which exists in all lands.
“Yes,” said Lanty. A tremor shaking his heart as he wondered why this heaven of wife and child was his.
As they passed into the other room they saw the child’s clothes upon a chair in a soft little heap like a nest; and all at once there rushed over Mabella’s tender heart all the misery of that other mother, and before Lanty knew it, Mabella was in his arms crying as if her heart would break.