“She’s better—she’ll pull through—and she’s a darling of a baby, Olga,” she said. “But you’ll have to watch her closely for a while. That deadly stuff has weakened her so!”
“O, I will, I will!” Olga promised. A great love for the little creature filled her heart, as she stooped to kiss her.
For a month after this, things went better. Sonia was at the store from eight to six, and Olga in her quiet rooms, worked steadily except when the baby claimed her attention. The baby wanted more and more attention as the days went by. She no longer lay limp and half unconscious, but awoke from sleep, laughing and crowing, to stretch and roll and kick like any healthy baby. She took many precious moments of Olga’s time, but Olga did not grudge them. In that one day of fear and dread, the baby had established herself once for all in the girl’s heart. If things could only go on as they were—if Sonia would earn her own clothes even, and be content to stay on and leave the baby to her care, Olga felt that she could be quite happy. But she had her misgivings in regard to Sonia. There was about her at times an air of mystery and of suppressed excitement that puzzled her sister. She spent many evenings out—with friends, she said, but she never told who the friends were. Still Olga was happy. Her work, her baby (she thought of it always now as hers), and the Camp Fire friends—these filled her days, and she put aside resolutely her misgivings in regard to her sister, worked doubly hard to pay the extra bills, and endured without complaint the discomfort of her crowded rooms where Sonia claimed and kept the most and best of everything. There was a cheery old lady in the room below—an old lady who dearly loved to get hold of a baby, and with her Olga left her little niece on Camp Fire nights, and when she went to market or to the school. The girls began to drop in again evenings, now that Sonia was so seldom there, and Olga welcomed them with shining eyes. The baby soon had all the girls at her feet. They called her “The Camp Fire Baby” and would have adopted her forthwith, but Olga would not agree to that.
“You can play with her and love her as much as you like, but she’s my very own,” she told them.
But with her delight in the child was always mingled a haunting fear that Sonia would some day snatch her up and disappear with her as suddenly as she had come.
It was in December that the blow fell. Sonia had not come back to supper, and Olga left the baby with old Mrs. Morris, and set off with Lizette for the Camp Fire meeting. It was a delightful meeting, and Olga enjoyed every minute of it, and the walk home with Elizabeth afterwards, while Sadie followed with Lizette.
“Come down soon and see my baby—and me,” she said, as Elizabeth and Sadie turned off at their own corner, and she went on with Lizette.
Before she could knock at Mrs. Morris’s door, it was opened by the old lady. “I’ve been watching for you——” she began, and instantly Olga read the truth in her troubled face.
“My—baby——” she gasped.
“She’s gone, dearie—her mother took her away,” the old lady said, her arms about the girl. “I tried to make her wait till you came, but she wouldn’t.”