The house at which she stopped was hardly to be distinguished from thousands of others in which a brief brownstone dignity had fallen, first to the boarding-house stage, and then to that of tenements. From the top of a flight of brownstone steps a frowzy, buxom, motherly woman came lumbering down to lend a hand with the baby carriage.
"So you've brought your baby, Mrs. Coburn. Now you'll be able to get settled."
The reply came as if it had been learned by rote. "Yes, now I'll be able to get settled. I've got her crib ready, though all my other things is strewed about just as when I moved in. Still, the crib's ready, which is the main thing. She's a fretful baby by nature, so you mustn't think it funny if you hear her cry. Some people thought I'd never raise her, so that if you ever hear say that my little girl died...."
"I'll know it's not true," the buxom woman laughed. "She couldn't die, and you have her here, now could she? Do let me have a peep."
By this time they had lifted the carriage over the steps and into the little passageway. Seeing that there was no help for this inspection, the strange woman trembled but resigned herself. The neighbor lifted the veil, and peered under it.
"My, what a love! And she don't look sick, not a little mite."
"Not her face, she don't. Her poor little body's some wasted, but then so long as I've got her...."
"I believe as it'd be too much lime-water in her milk. She's bottle-fed, ain't she? Well, them bottle-fed babies—I've had two of 'em out of my five—you got to try and try, and ten to one you'll find as it's that nasty lime-water that upsets 'em."
Having unlocked her door, which was on the left of the passageway, the strange woman pulled her treasure into a room stuffy with closed windows, and dim with drawn blinds. Turning the key behind her, she was alone at last.
She fell on her knees, throwing the veil back with a fierceness that almost tore it off. She strained forward. Her breath came in racking, panting sobs.