The old sign was gone from the city jail, and a freshly painted one sparkled at them in the sunshine. “DAY NURSERY,” it said.
The girls turned in through the big double doors, with the ease of familiarity, went up the broad, winding stairs, and opened the first door.
The two large front rooms opened out together. In the first one were about a dozen snowy white cribs, holding sleeping babies—all sorts and ages. Tiny, wrinkled ones with tight fists. Big, roly-poly ones with roguish faces. Some with dark eyes and skin. The barred windows cast striped shadows across the counterpanes.
There were gay rag rugs upon the floor, scores of Jessie Wilcox Smith pictures around the walls, boxes of scarlet geraniums in the windows before the ruffled dotted curtains. Low white shelves in one corner held toys. All about were small tables and chairs. Along one wall were hooks holding the daytime clothes, with a pair of shoes, slipped off for the nap, on the floor underneath each hook. On another wall was a row of tiny toothbrushes, all colors, and a row of shiny tin cups. The whole place had a clean baby smell.
“You’d never think the jail could be so nice,” Amy declared as she always did when they came into the rooms. “How did you ever think of it, Jo?”
Mrs. Barnes was over in a far corner beside a crib where she was settling a rosy one-year-old for a nap. They could see her assistant in the other room, sitting in a low chair with a basket of mending on her lap.
“Oh, hello, Joan and Amy.” Mrs. Barnes looked up as they came in. “Here’s a new one. Her name is Mary, and she just came this morning. Isn’t she a darling?”
The girls went over to view the newcomer.
“Tommy’ll be so glad to see you, when he wakes up,” went on Mrs. Barnes. “He jabbers about you all the time. Come and take a peep at him. He’s in the other room, now.”
More bars, more curtains, more geraniums, more cheerful rugs. More cribs with sleeping babies.