“Who is his mother?” she asked.
Dead silence.
The lady looked up and caught all the young men interrogating each other with their eyebrows.
“Don’t you know?” she asked with an air of natural surprise.
After another moment’s pause it was Bayre who boldly blurted out the truth.
“We haven’t the least idea.”
And he proceeded, in as few words as possible, to relate the whole story of their tragic experience of the day, to which the lady listened with wondering eyes.
“It’s all very strange,” said she. “But how very, very awkward for you!”
And then she burst out laughing, and the three young men, with a delightful feeling that this angel would help them out of their embarrassment, and that at any rate the baby had brought them a charming acquaintance, joined heartily in her merriment. Whereat the small boy made an ineffectual attempt to clap his pudgy hands in sympathy.
The movement caught the woman’s watchful eye, and she caught the child up to her neck and smothered him with kisses.