"Oh, you are the dear, good God's 'tisement and you have come to be my nurse and take my 'Carthy's place. See, our mother, see! Black hands won't ever, ever make creeps in me any more, now that our Father who art in Heaven has sent the 'tisement to me."
The stranger clasped the child to her heart, kissing his golden curls and sweet brown eyes while her tears fell.
"Pardon this uncontrolled emotion, madam," she said, "and excuse me, please, for taking such a liberty with your child. I have just passed through a great sorrow and am very nervous."
I led her to our rooms where she sat with my little darling in her arms, gazing into his face lovingly and moaning, "My little angel! Oh, my little angel!" He took out his tiny handkerchief and wiped her eyes and kissing her said:
"Don't cry, 'Tisement, don't cry. Come and ride with our mother and my little brother and me and you can hold me in your lap; come, 'Tisement, come."
She rode with us, sitting beside me, holding my little Corbell.
"Why do you call me 'Tisement?" she asked.
Corbell explained that, hearing us talking about advertising for a nurse and seeing how we had failed, he had sent an advertisement to God himself, asking for just the kind he wanted, "and," he added, "I knew you were God's 'tisement as soon as I saw you."
When we returned she told me her sad story, the tragic story of a beautiful, fair, proud woman with the one black drop in her veins. All her loved ones were gone, her beautiful boy the last to leave her, and she longed for little hands to soothe away her pain. She stayed with us and her new-found charge saw only the pure white face, the delicate soft hands that touched him lovingly, and knew nothing of the dark link that held her in bondage to the past.