This she posted, but the most gloomy apprehensions assailed her.
“Mrs. Geldheraus may not call for letters for a week,” she reflected, “and where on earth can I hide Augusta? Who will take her? What story can I tell about her? It is distracting!”
By degrees she grew a little calmer. It would not be difficult, she hoped, to find some decent woman to mind her sister at her own home. Surely there were plenty of people in London willing to take care of a child. She would enquire. Meantime it struck her that Augusta looked ridiculous in her great night-dress and cap, so that before placing her in the hands of any stranger it would be necessary to buy her a complete set of baby linen.
To this end, having walked to the top of Tottenham Court Road she hailed a hansom, and drove to Westbourne Grove.
CHAPTER IX.
A PROMISING ADVERTISEMENT.
With no little diffidence did Miss Prudence Semaphore, a woman quite unused to the ways and wants of babies, present herself at the special counter in Whiteley’s devoted to their needs, and falter out that she required a complete outfit for an infant. The attendant who waited on her considered that she had a most extraordinary customer to deal with, for the lady neither knew the age of the child nor the names and quantities of the needful garments, and when she finally took everything that was suggested to her, she required instruction as to how and in what order the various articles were to be put on. Having requested that a parcel of the most indispensable objects should be given to her, and that the remainder should be delivered that afternoon at 37, Beaconsfield Gardens, the next step for Miss Prudence was to find a nurse who would undertake the care of Augusta. This at once landed her in difficulties. She first thought of appealing to the shop-woman, but the manner of that superior young person was so lofty that the words died on Miss Semaphore’s lips. The Universal Provider certainly did not provide homes for infants. Prudence dared not ask any of her acquaintances as to a suitable person, yet could not imagine how else she was to get one. She could not seize the first respectable-looking body that passed by and ask her would she mind an infant. Like a woman with a guilty secret she wandered up and down the Grove, looking vaguely into shop windows but seeing nothing, and wondering all the time what she was to do. It seemed almost as desperate an undertaking to get rid of a baby as to get rid of a corpse.
At last the idea struck her that the laundress who washed for herself and her sister might know of someone suitable. Mrs. Robbins lived at Hammersmith, and Miss Prudence, hailing an omnibus going in that direction, got in. If Mrs. Robbins could not help her, what was she to do? As she journeyed on, however, doubts as to the wisdom of consulting Mrs. Robbins assailed her. She would put herself, to a certain extent, in the woman’s power, and the civilest of laundresses might not be pleasant as a confidante. Again, Mrs. Robbins might gossip with the servants at Beaconsfield Gardens, and as Miss Semaphore’s one aim was to avoid the tongues of her fellow-boarders, she felt the risk to be too great.
Accordingly, though she had paid her fare to Hammersmith Broadway, she presently signalled to the conductor to set her down.
“We ain’t there yet, mum,” said that functionary. “You sed ’Ammersmith.”
“No matter, no matter,” answered Miss Prudence, “I wish to be set down here.”