It read:—
“A respectable married woman, having no children of her own, would like to adopt or mind a healthy baby. Comfortable home. Care and affection of a mother guaranteed. Premium required. Address, by letter only, X. Y. Z., 42, Plummer’s Cottages, Barker’s Rents, Elm Lane.”
Miss Prudence was enchanted.
“The very thing!” she exclaimed. “‘Comfortable home.’ ‘Care and affection of a mother guaranteed.’ Just what I want.”
She copied the address, thanked the shop-woman profusely, and gave her half-a-crown for her trouble. Lunch hour at Beaconsfield Gardens was long past, so Prudence ate a bun, drank a glass of milk, and thought she had done a good morning’s work.
The chief drawback was that she should now have to keep Augusta concealed for at least another day, instead of being able to smuggle her out of the house that night as she had hoped. It was a risk, but she had no alternative, much as she dreaded the secret in some way getting out. She found Augusta sleeping. A vague hope had sprung up in her breast that on her return she might discover her sister in her normal condition, and be able to look back on the events of the night as a bad dream. She was doomed to disappointment. It was all but too real. Without disturbing the infant, at whom she gazed for a time with mingled pity and aversion, she sat down and wrote at once to X. Y. Z., asking that respectable married woman if she were still willing to undertake the care of a baby, and if she would write, or wire by return, appointing a place of meeting, as there was a little baby girl she would like to entrust to her motherly care.
Though she was unwilling that the child should be permanently adopted, she felt sure that some mutually satisfactory arrangement might be entered into. She wound up, “Pray write or telegraph at once without fail, as the case is urgent, and I will pay you handsomely for your trouble.” This she signed with initials, gave the address of a neighbouring stationer’s, where letters were received at a penny each, and posted it herself.
CHAPTER X.
IN WHICH MISS PRUDENCE EXPLAINS MATTERS.
The next thing Miss Prudence felt she should do was to see Mrs. Wilcox and prepare her for hearing at any time that Augusta had left suddenly. Mrs. Wilcox sat in the little room she called her Office, where she received callers on business, made up her books, wrote letters, and otherwise employed herself.
“I am so sorry to hear your sister is not well,” she said as Prudence entered. “I hope she feels better now.”