In the Bishop's Carriage Part 33

And suddenly--Mag!--I felt something that was a cross between a rose-leaf and a snowflake touch my hand.

If it wasn't that delectable baby!

I caught her and lifted her to my lap and hugged the chuckling thing as though that was what I came for. Then, in a moment, I remembered the paper and lifted her little white slip.

It was gone, Mag. The under-petticoat hadn't a sign of the paper I'd pinned to it.

My head whirled in that minute. I suppose I was faint with the heat, with hunger and fatigue and worry, but I felt myself slipping out of things when I heard the rustling of skirts, and there before me stood the mother of my baby.

The little wretch! She deserted me and flew to that pretty mother of hers in her long, cool white trailing things, and sat in her arms and mocked at me.

It was easy enough to begin talking. I told her a tale about being a newspaper woman out on a story; how I'd run across the baby and all the rest of it.

"I must ask your pardon," I finished up, "for disturbing you, but two things sent me here--one to know if the baby got home safe, and the other," I gulped, "to ask about a paper with some notes that I'd pinned to her skirt."

She shook her head.

It was in that very minute that I noticed the baby's ribbons were pink; they had been blue in the morning.

"Of course," I suggested, "you've had her clothes changed and--"

"Why, yes, of course," said baby's mother. "The first thing I did when I got hold of her was to strip her and put her in a tub; the second, was to discharge that gossiping nurse for letting her out of her sight."

"And the soiled things she had on--the dress with the blue ribbons?"

"I'll find out," she said.

She rang for the maid and gave her an order.

"Was it a valuable paper?" she asked.

"Not--very," I stammered. My tongue was thick with hope and dread.

"Just--my notes, you know, but I do need them. I couldn't carry the baby easily, so I pinned them on her skirt, thinking--thinking--"

The maid came in and dumped a little heap of white before me. I fell on my knees.

Oh, yes, I prayed all right, but I searched, too. And there it was.

What I said to that woman I don't know even now. I flew out through the hall and down the steps and--

And there Kitty Wilson corralled me.

"Say, where's that stick-pin?" she cried.

"Here!--here, you darling!" I said, pressing it into her hand. "And, Kitty, whenever you feel like swiping another purse--just don't do it.

It doesn't pay. Just you come down to the Vaudeville and ask for Nance Olden some day, and I'll tell you why."

"Gee!" said Kitty, impressed. "Shall--shall I call ye a hansom, lady?"

Should she! The blessed inspiration of her!

I got into the wagon and we drove down street--to the Vaudeville.

I burst in past the stage doorkeeper, amazed to see me, and rushed into Fred Obermuller's office.

"There!" I cried, throwing that awful paper on the desk before him.

"Now cinch 'em, Fred Obermuller, as they cinched you. It'll be the holiest blackmail that ever--oh, and will you pay for the hansom?"

XVI.

I don't remember much about the first part of the lunch. I was so hungry I wanted to eat everything in sight, and so happy that I couldn't eat a thing.

But Mr. O. kept piling the things on my plate, and each time I began to talk he'd say: "Not now--wait till you're rested, and not quite so famished."

I laughed.

"Do I eat as though I was starved?"

"You--you look tired, Nance."

"Well," I said slowly, "it's been a hard week."

"It's been hard for me, too; harder, I think, than for you. It wasn't fair to me to let me--think what I did and say what I did. I'm so sorry, Nance,--and ashamed. So ashamed! You might have told me."

"And have you put your foot down on the whole thing; not much!"

He laughed. He's got such a boyish laugh in spite of his chin and his eye-gla.s.ses and the bigness of him. He filled my gla.s.s for me and helped me again to the salad.

Oh, Mag, it's such fun to be a woman and have a man wait on you like that! It's such fun to be hungry and to sit down to a jolly little table just big enough for two, with carnations nodding in the tall slim vase, with a fat, soft-footed, quick-handed waiter dancing behind you, and something tempting in every dish your eye falls on.

It's a gay, happy, easy world, Maggie darlin'. I vow I can't find a dark corner in it--not to-day.

None but the swellest place in town was good enough, Obermuller had said, for us to celebrate in. The waiters looked queerly at us when we came in--me in my dusty shoes and mussed hair and old rig, and Mr. O.

in his working togs. But do you suppose we cared?

He was smoking and I was pretending to eat fruit when at last I got fairly launched on my story.

He listened to it all with never a word of interruption. Sometimes I thought he was so interested that he couldn't bear to miss a word I said. And then again I fancied he wasn't listening at all to me; only watching me and listening to something inside of himself.

Can you see him, Mag, sitting opposite me there at the pretty little table, off in a private room by ourselves? He looked so big and strong and masterful, with his eyes half closed, watching me, that I hugged myself with delight to think that I--I, Nancy Olden, had done something for him he couldn't do for himself.

It made me so proud, so tipsily vain, that as I leaned forward eagerly talking, I felt that same intoxicating happiness I get on the stage when the audience is all with me, and the two of us--myself and the many-handed, good-natured other fellow over on the other side of the footlights--go careering off on a jaunt of fun and fancy, like two good playmates.

He was silent a minute when I got through. Then he laid his cigar aside and stretched out his hand to me.

"And the reason, Nance--the reason for it all?"