But Mr. Dilke, though far from a stupid young man, confessed himself a little dazed by Miss Ruth's rapid and excited story. Whereupon, laughing, she went over it again, adding, "And here is the address and the name is De Leon Breaux, and how shall we word the telegram?"
And after much speculation the following was written and sent:
"Nurse-girl, Rose O'Brien, found in hospital, paralyzed. Child safe and well.
When Norma, on reaching home with the tired child, finished her story, which, truth to tell, lost nothing of its dramatic possibilities in her telling, Mary Carew looked up with her face so set and white that Norma, who had been too intent in her recital to notice the gradual change in the other's manner, was startled.
"Don't take on so, Mary," she cried, removing the child's wraps as she spoke, "I've always warned you she wasn't any deserted child, haven't I?" but there was a real tenderness in Norma's voice as she reminded the other of it.
"You'd better get your supper," Mary replied, "it's near time for you to be going," and she pushed her work aside and held out her arms for the child, her face softening as it did for nothing else in the world.
Tired, cold, dazed with crying, the drooping little soul crept into Mary's arms, which closed hungrily and held her close as the sobs began to come again.
Unlike her usual self, Mary let Norma prepare the supper unaided, while she sat gazing down on the flushed little face pillowed on her arm, and drew off the broken shoes, chafing and rubbing the cold, tired feet with her hand.
She wanted no supper, she declared shortly in response to Norma's call, but on being pressed, came to the table and drank a little tea thirstily, and fed the sleepy child from her own plate.
"Now don't take on so, Mary, don't fret about it while I'm gone," Norma begged as she hurried off to her nightly duties. "I'll miss her just as much as you, if it does turn out that we have to give her up, and for the darling's own sake, Mary, we ought to be glad to think she's going back to her own."
But Mary, laying the sleeping child down in the crib, burst forth as the door closed, "An' it's Norma Bonkowski can tell me I ought to be glad! She can tell me that, and then say she'll miss her the same as me! It's little then she knows about my feelings,--for it'll be to lose the one bright thing outer my life as has ever come in it. 'Go back to her own!' Like as not her own's a mother like them fine ones I see on the Avenoos as leaves their little ones to grow up with hired nurses. 'Give her up--give--her up--' Norma says so easy like,--when every word chokes me--" and struggling against her sobs, Mary fell on her knees beside the crib, burying her face in the covers, "an' I must go on sittin' here day after day sewin', an' my precious one gone; stitchin' an' stitchin', one day jus' like another stretchin' on ahead, long as life itself, an' no little feet a-patterin' up the stairs, an' no little voice a-callin' on me,--nothin' to live for, nothin' to keep me from thinkin' an' thinkin' till I'm nigh to goin' crazy with the stitchin'--give her up?"--a wild look was on Mary's face as she raised it suddenly, a desperate one in her eyes--"I'll not give her up--she's mine----"