Yet if it was the fellows’ doing, where had they got it? And if it was not the fellows’ doing, why should any one leave a baby asleep in his cot? The whole thing was inexplicable.
Just then the child, in playing with his chain, slipped a little on the smooth cloth of his overalls, and Bootles, with a “Whoa! whoa, my lad!” hauled it up again. In doing so he felt a piece of paper rustle somewhere about the embroidered skirt.
“A note. This grows melodramatic,” said Bootles, craning his head to find it. “Oh, here we are! Now we shall see.”
The note was written in a firm, large, yet thoroughly feminine hand, and ran thus:
“You will not absolve me from my oath of secrecy respecting our marriage, though now that I have offended you, I may starve or go to the work-house. I cannot break my oath, though you have broken all yours, but I am determined that you shall acknowledge your child. I am going to leave her to-night in your rooms with her clothes. By midnight I shall be out of the country. I do this because I have obtained a good situation, and because when I reach my destination I shall have spent my last shilling. I give you fair warning, however, that if you desert the child, or fail to acknowledge her, I will break my oath and proclaim our marriage. If you engage a nurse she will not be much trouble. She is a good and sweet-tempered child, and I have called her Mary, after your dear mother. Oh, how she would pity me if she could see me now! Farewell.”
From that moment Bootles absolved “the fellows” from any share in the affair; but what to do with the child he had not the least idea.
“It is the very devil,” he said aloud, watching the busy fingers still playing with his chain.
He gathered it awkwardly in his arms, and rose to look for the clothing spoken of in the letter. Yes, there it was, a parcel of goodly size, wrapped in a stout brown paper cover, and on the chair beside his cot lay the out-door garments of a young child—a white coat bordered with fur, a fur-trimmed cap, and some other things, which Bootles did not quite understand the use of; white wool fingerless gloves (at least he did not know what else they could be), and some longer things of the same class, like stockings without feet.
Bootles shook his head bewilderingly. “Mother means it to stop; I don’t know what to do,” he said, helplessly.
It occurred to him then that perhaps some of the fellows might be able to make a suggestion. He did not know what to do with the child for the night, nor, for the matter of that, what to do with it for the moment. He had the sense not to take it out into the chill midnight air, and when he attempted to put it back into the cot it rebelled, clinging to his watch-chain with might and main.