“I haven’t hurried. I deputized my business man to look the thing up, but—I don’t deny that I wish the other rightful Joseph Smith might be found to have left the country,” he answered.
“Even despite the anxiety Josephine has caused you?”
“Yes, madam. I mean to be honest. I hate to set detectives on the task, yet I will. But meanwhile, until the child’s relatives are found, what shall I do with her? Can you direct me to a capable woman who will engage to look after her welfare for the few days I may need her?”
Mrs. Merriman looked at him critically, with a twinkle gleaming in her eye. An audacious thought had come to her, yet a thought so full of possibilities for good—and, maybe, ill—that she decided to act upon it, and quietly replied:
“Yes, Mr. Smith, I think I do know just the right woman. She has lately returned from a winter in California, where she has been nursing an invalid back to health. She is a trained nurse and was with me last year, during my long illness. I received her card recently saying that she would be in this city about now. Indeed, she must have left Southern California at about the same time as your little ward, though she was to delay a day or so at Chicago. I will send to inquire if she is at home, at her boarding-house, if you desire.”
He assented, adding:
“I should be very grateful. I trust I may be able to prove later on that I am not unappreciative of all your goodness.”
“Don’t mention it. Good morning. I will write the note immediately, and until some person is regularly established in your house to look after little Josephine, I will step in there now and then, myself, to see that all is right.”
They parted most amicably, and the first action of Mr. Smith, upon reaching his office, was to send for his lawyer and tell him that he had abandoned the question of line-fences entirely; that Mrs. Merriman should be notified that all claim to the “insignificant strip of land midway their respective side-yards was hereby and forever relinquished, with no costs to herself.”
Her own proceeding was the writing of a note to her friend, the nurse, and so imperative was the summons it contained that the lady answered in person, although not yet sufficiently rested from the fatigue of a long journey and her previous engagement to desire another so promptly.