Just after Baby Ernest's coming, Velleda and Freddy went all the way to Mrs. Katzman's house—and it was quite a long way, fully three blocks—to beg her to exchange him for a girl.
"We've only used him two days and he's just as good as new," stated Velleda, guiltily concealing the fact that he cried a great deal. But Mrs. Katzman said she really couldn't think of it, as God settled all those matters himself. It was on this occasion that Velleda had cross-examined Mrs. Katzman's little boy regarding the stork. There was no doubting the truth of Georgie's statements, for he told Velleda dolefully that he himself had long desired a brother or a sister, but never a baby had he seen in that house. Evidently Mrs. Katzman fetched them from somewhere else in the brown satchel.
"You might have had ours," said Velleda. "We didn't want him. We prayed for a girl."
"Oh, you'll soon find out that don't do any good." Georgie kicked gloomily at a stone. "I used to pray, too, but God's awful stubborn when it comes to babies."
Velleda wondered at the strangeness of things. All the little girls and some of the little boys who had no baby brother or sister to take care of, thought it a great treat to be allowed to wheel the baby-buggy up and down the square, really a most irksome task, as Velleda could testify. At Velleda's house they believed with the poet that "Time's noblest offspring is the last," so the baby reigned king, which was not always pleasant for his smaller slaves. Therefore she wondered at Georgie's taste. However, since he evidently regarded his brotherless state as a deep misfortune, she was full of sympathy and would do what she could for him.
"You just pray a little harder," she advised; "and," struck by a brilliant thought, "look in the brown satchel every night! Maybe you'll find one left over."
She and Freddy went home feeling very sorry for Georgie. He was only another illustration of the old saying which Onkel often commented on—the shoemaker's children wear ragged shoes, the painter's own house is the last to receive a fresh coat, and the stork woman has no baby of her own.
Regarding this great question there was one point upon which everybody agreed. Velleda had her own system of deciding questions; she sifted the versions of her various informants, retained those points upon which all agreed, and upon this common ground proceeded to erect the structure of her own reasoning. Grown-ups, she knew, had a weakness for mild fibbing, which was not lying and not wrong at all, but was naturally very disconcerting when one burned to learn the real truth about a thing. The stork theory, the river theory, the falling from Heaven theory—all possessed one mutual starting point: God sent the little babies. There was of course no doubt in that regard, and Velleda finally decided that God placed them in the woods in a certain spot, marked where they were to go, and then vanished into Heaven (for of course no one had ever seen God), whereupon Mrs. Katzman approached with the brown satchel.
This was a most satisfactory theory, with no flaws in its logic, reasonable and probable, and conflicting with no known law. The question was shelved.
Velleda, going up to the third floor room of Nellie Johnson with a pitcher of milk which the dairywoman had asked her to deliver, found the girl huddled up before a small stove, looking so white and miserable that Velleda's heart ached for her, although she knew that Nellie was a very wicked person and nobody in the neighborhood spoke to her. Across her knees lay a white bundle. Velleda considered the matter.