“Left her at the Infirmary;—but, oh! you’ve not seen baby?”
“Seen—seen what! your baby?” asked Raymond, as if he thought Rosamond’s senses astray, while his bachelor friend was ready to laugh at a young mother’s alarms, all the more when Julius answered, “It is too true; the baby and her nurse have not been seen here since ten o’clock; and we are seriously afraid the girl may have been beguiled to those races. There is a report of the child’s cloak having been seen on a tax-cart.”
“Then it was so,” exclaimed Cecil, starting forward. “I saw a baby’s mantle of that peculiar green, and it struck me that some farmer’s wife had been aping little Julia’s.”
“Where? When?” cried Rosamond.
“They passed us, trying to find a place. I did not show it to you for you were talking to those gentlemen.”
“Did you see it, Brown?” asked Julius, going towards the coachman. “Our baby and nurse, I mean.”
“I can’t tell about Miss Charnock, sir,” said the coachman, “but I did think I remarked two young females with young Gadley in a tax-cart. I would not be alarmed, sir, nor my lady,” he added, with the freedom of a confidential servant, who, like all the household, adored Lady Rosamond. “It was a giddy thing in the young woman to have done; and no place to take the young lady to. But there—there were more infants there than a man could count, and it stands to reason they come to no harm.”
“The most sensible thing that has been said yet,” muttered the friend; but Rosamond was by no means pacified. “Gadley’s cart! They’ll go to that horrid public-house in Water Lane where there’s typhus and diphtheria and everything; and there’s this fog—and that girl will never wrap her up. Oh! why did I ever go?”
“My dear Rose,” said Julius, trying to speak with masculine composure, “this is nonsense. Depend upon it, Emma is only anxious to get her home.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know! If she could take her to the races, she would be capable of taking her anywhere! They all go and drink at that beer-shop, and catch—Julius, the pony carriage! Oh! it’s gone!”