As for Josephine, after a morning of dreamless, health-restoring sleep, she woke to find a familiar figure sitting by her bedside, smiling affectionately upon her. A brief, puzzled glance, a rubbing of the brown eyes to make sure they saw aright, and the child sprang out of bed, into the woman’s arms crying:
“Oh, Red Kimono! You dear, kind, Mrs. Red Kimono, where did you come from?”
CHAPTER X.
TOM, DICK, HARRY, AND THE BABY.
For the next week Mr. Smith was untiring in his efforts to find the missing Joseph Smith, his namesake. Telegrams sped back and forth between Baltimore and San Diego, with the result that the only information gained was: on the very day, or the next following that, on which Mrs. John Smith sailed from San Diego for Santiago de Chile, Doctor Alexander MacDonald, otherwise known as “Doctor Mack,” had departed for the Philippines. No person at their recent home knew anything further concerning these two persons, and owing to their long journeys all communication with them was for the present impossible.
The seventy-five Joseph Smiths residing in or around Baltimore had all been unearthed, so to speak, without finding one who in any particular beyond the name resembled the desired one. Not one was anybody’s twin, not one happened to have had any relative in either San Diego or Santiago, and not one welcomed the thought of receiving a strange child into his household.
One Joseph Smith had, indeed, been found to have lately resided at 1000 Bismarck Street and this confusion of street and avenue explained to Uncle Joe’s mind the whole curious, yet simple blunder. This Bismarck-Street Joseph Smith was, doubtless, the right one; but, also, he was the only one of the seventy-five who could not now be located! He had disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed him, and Josephine’s present guardian rested his efforts; merely causing an advertisement to be inserted in each of the daily papers to the effect that the person answering it might hear of something to his advantage by calling at the newspaper office and leaving his address for the advertiser, “S.”
Nobody called. Matters dropped into a comfortable routine. Uncle Joe was disturbed at finding the name of the trained nurse was also Smith, and to prevent unpleasant complications, requested that he might call her as the little girl did, “Mrs. Red Kimono,” or, more briefly, “Miss Kimono,” she having set him right as to her maidenly condition.
She readily and smilingly agreed to this, and, reporting the matter to Mrs. Merriman, laughed so heartily over it, that that lady remonstrated, saying:
“Dear Miss Desire, it’s outrageous. Under the circumstances I would never permit it. The idea! He excludes you from table with himself and the little girl, does he not? For so Michael tells me.”
“Yes. Not, I fancy, from arrogance, but merely from force of habit. He dislikes women, utterly and sincerely. Or he thinks he does. But Josephine has won his whole heart for childhood, and he likes her to be with him as constantly as possible. From what the servants tell me, she has wrought a complete transformation in the household. And she is so lovely, so winning, that eventually she’ll bring everything right. I don’t mind the table business; the main thing is that I am in his house, tolerated there, and determined, if the time is not too short, to prove to him that blood is thicker than water, and that, just though he thinks himself, he has been wholly unjust in his treatment of others. Oh, I don’t object to the situation. I get lots of quiet fun out of it, and haven’t felt so happy in a long time. I’ve even lost all bitterness against him, poor, solitary, prejudice-bound old man,” returned the nurse.