Then Jack hurried off as if the matter had been positively settled.
Aunt Nancy gazed after him with an expression of mingled pain and perplexity on her wrinkled face, and just then Louis crept to her knee, begging in his odd language to be taken on her lap.
"You dear little creature!" she cried, pressing him to her bosom while he chattered and laughed. "It would be cruel to send you among the paupers, when a lonely old woman like me loves you so much!"
Jack looked back just in time to see this picture, and there was no longer any doubt in his mind but that Aunt Nancy would accede to his request.
Five minutes later he returned clad in his own garments, which looked considerably the worse for the hasty drying, and said as he ran swiftly past the little woman,—
"Don't let Louis go into the house, for I'll want to get hold of him in a hurry!"
Aunt Nancy began to make some remark; but he was moving so swiftly that the words were unheard, and the old lady said to herself with a long-drawn sigh as she pressed the baby yet more closely,—
"I'm afraid it is wrong to do as he wishes; but how can I allow cruel men to take this dear child from me, when I know he will not be cared for properly?"
Then she began to think the matter over more calmly, and each moment it became clearer to her mind that by acceding to Jack's request she would be evading the truth, if not absolutely telling a lie.
"I can't do it," she said, kissing the baby affectionately. "Much as I shall grieve over them, it is better they should go than for me to do what I know to be wrong."