The Mountain Girl by Emma Payne Erskine Chapter 29 Page 17

impulse, she would have darted by with her fingers in her ears, but instead, she dropped the shilling in the old man’s hand, and quietly turned toward the door.

“Thank you,” his fingers closed over the shilling. Her pallor struck him then, even as the red spot on her cheek deepened, and he held out his arms for the child.

“Let me carry ‘im for you, ma’m. Is it a boy?”

But her arms closed tighter about her baby. “He is my little son.” It was almost a cry, as she said it, but again she forced herself to calmness, and, walking slowly out, added, with a quiet smile: “I always keep him myself. We do in America.”

In a moment she was gone. The warm sunlight