CHAPTER XIX
ROSABEL
“Rosabel who?” exclaimed Nan, as Patty came up on the verandah with the baby in her arms.
“I don’t know, I’m sure. You may call her Rosabel anything you like. We picked her up by the wayside.”
“Yes,” said Dick Phelps, who had followed Patty up the steps. “Miss Rosabel seemed lonely without anyone to talk to, so we brought her back here to visit you.”
“You must be crazy!” cried Nan, “but what a cunning baby it is! Let me take her.”
Nan took the good-natured little midget and sat down in a verandah rocker, with the baby in her arms.
“Tell a straight story, Patty,” said her father, “is it one of the neighbour’s children, or did you kidnap it?”
“Neither,” said Patty, turning to her father; “we found the baby lying right near the edge of a wood, in plain sight from the road. And there was nobody around, and Papa, I just know that the child’s wretch of a mother deserted it, and left it there to die!”
“Nonsense,” said her father. “Mothers don’t leave their little ones around as carelessly as that.”