“You can keep my dressing-room for a nursery,” offered Patty; “I can get along without it for a time.”
“It isn’t really big enough,” objected Nan. “The child must have lots of fresh air, and—oh, I never did have any patience with those idiot people who say, ‘Why do women waste their affection on dogs? Why not adopt a dear little baby?’ It’s a very different proposition, I can tell you! Of course, we’ll have to have a nurse, if the child stays here at all, but where we’ll put her I don’t know.”
“Well,” said Patty, hopefully, “perhaps we can find a home for her quickly. And, too, I’d like to have her here a few weeks. I think she’s a darling plaything, but I don’t want to keep her all her life. I wonder who the mother is. Do you suppose she knows me?”
“Of course she knows of you,” said her father; “your name is often in the papers in connection with various charities as well as in the social notes. She chose you, probably, as being too kind-hearted to shift the responsibility of the affair.”
“And I am! I’ll accept the responsibility of finding Milly a home, but it can’t be here, of that I’m certain.”
“How shall you go about it?” asked Nan, looking helpless and rather hopeless.
“With energy and promptness,” returned Patty. “And the promptness begins right now.”
She seated herself at the telephone table and called up a wealthy and childless woman of her acquaintance.
“Oh, Mrs. Porter,” she began, “I’ve the most wonderful opportunity for you! Don’t you want to adopt a baby girl, a real Wonder-Child, all big, dark eyes and curly hair and the sweetest little hands and feet?”
“Oh, thank you, no,” replied the amused voice at the other end of the line; “it is, indeed, a chance of a thousand, I am sure; but we’re going South for the winter, and we shall be bobbing about, with no settled abode for a baby. Where did you get the paragon?”