"I've come for the child--the little girl," she gasped, as if she had run at racing speed direct from the place indicated by the telegram.
"Oh, she belongs to you, does she?" remarked the inspector coolly. "Well, you've no call to be in such a 'urry; you've been very comfortable about her for the last six weeks."
"Comfortable!" echoed the excited one; "why, I've been very near out of my mind. I thought she was drowned, and I was so frightened, I daren't say a word to any one about it. And my lady away----"
"Then you're not the mother?" said the inspector sharply.
"The mother!--my goodness, no! I'm the head nurse. My young lady's mother is the Countess of Morecambe."
"Then what does she say to all this, pray?" he asked.
"My lady went abroad two months ago to one of those foreign cure places, and she doesn't know but what Lady Susy is safe with me at this minute," the woman replied.
The inspector gave a prolonged whistle.
"Well, you're a pretty sort of nurse to leave in charge of a child," he remarked. "I shouldn't wonder if you get the sack for this. Do you know the child's at the workhouse, and that they've cropped her head as bare as mine?"
At this the woman simply sat down and sobbed aloud.