The little girl nodded.
“Second flight up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Queer enough, queer enough,” he mused, as he walked on.
“Your baby has eyes exactly like you, Dick,” said the Doctor, a few days later. “Honestly, no joking; I saw the little fellow on the street and knew him by his eyes.”
After that Dick’s heart went out to the baby more and more, and he was eager to see it. One day he saw the little nurse-girl wheeling the carriage, and as fast as his lame body would permit he hurried and hobbled down to the street, hoping it would pass near him. Sure enough it did, and Dick’s heart jumped into his throat as he leaned on his cane and peered into the carriage to catch his first glimpse of the baby he had grown to think of as his own. Yes, those were his own eyes—his very own gazing up at him, and he touched the little hand with reverence and awe. The baby laughed and twisted its small soft fingers about his thumb, and clung to his hand as if unwilling to let him go. For weeks after that he would wake at night, thinking he felt that clinging touch upon his hand; and those great dark, startled eyes, the very counterpart of his own, seemed illuminating the night for him.
It was early November when he failed to see the baby at the window or on the street; nor did the mother appear at the window for four days. The morning of the fifth day, Dick saw from his window a little white hearse drawn by white ponies pause at the house opposite, and then some one came out with a small casket followed by the “male relative” and a few sad-faced friends.
That day Dick entered Gethsemane, and the mourners who followed the little baby to its last resting-place shed no bitterer tears than he. Mixed with his keen anguish for the loss of the child was fear for the life of the mother who was too ill to attend the burial.
That night Dr. Griffin was sent for, and he found Dick so ill and feverish that he was alarmed. His tears mingled with Dick’s, when the poor boy told him of the baby’s death, and begged him to go over and inquire after the “little woman.”
“You can ask the janitor, Doctor; just say friends opposite want to inquire after her; you needn’t say no more.”