“Couldn’t we take him home and decide after?” pleaded the lady, with gentle feminine tact, “It will be a pleasant visit for the poor child, if nothing more.”
“He seems bent upon it,” answered the gentleman; laughing, and rather pleased with this half measure. “I think you could hardly get him from me yourself, Mattie.”
The lady only laughed. She had no desire to weaken the effect already produced by the caressing helplessness of the little orphan, by claiming more than an equal share in his preference.
“Well, then, let us go,” she said, in haste to have the child all to themselves.
“First, let us inquire about him. Perhaps he has parents or friends to interfere. In that case, you know, it would be out of the question.”
The young wife looked very grave at this, and the cloud of anxiety did not leave her face till it was ascertained at the superintendent’s office that Edward was an orphan, his father unknown, if living, and his mother’s death recorded in the hospital books at Bellevue.
Thus accidentally, and almost from an affectionate caprice, this poor human waif was taken from his home in the nurseries; and when Mary Margaret came with her eager love on the visiting-day, leading little Terry by the hand—who was the bearer of a great orange for his foster-brother—the child was gone.
This was a terrible blow to the good nurse. But when she heard that Eddie had gone off with an undoubted gentleman and lady, and that a splendid private carriage had waited for them at the ferry, she was, to an extent, consoled, though this was all the positive knowledge the laws of the institution allowed her to obtain.
As for little Terry, he broke forth into a vociferous fit of crying, and for some minutes his plump and freckled cheeks were inundated with tears; but he, too, found a source of consolation in the big orange which now belonged entirely to himself, and which he devoured incontinently, skin and all, while seated on the wharf waiting a return of the ferryboat which would convey himself and his mother back from their disappointing visit.