“Um!” he murmured. “She’d be better if she was a boy,” and he ran out to play.
So the abandoned baby was kept at the Bobbsey house.
“Oh, I think it’s terribly romantic to have a strange baby at your house, Nan,” said Julia Clark, when she and some other girls were talking about the matter one day at recess. “Just think, she may turn out to be an heiress to a million dollars!”
“And she might turn out to be a gypsy,” suggested Grace Lavine.
“She isn’t dark enough for a gypsy,” said Nan. “And I don’t believe she’ll ever have a million dollars. Daddy says if she belonged to a wealthy family the papers would be filled with the story about her, and detectives would be searching all over for her.”
“Who do you s’pose she is?” asked Nellie.
“Nobody knows,” Nan answered, and that was about all that could be said.
There surely was a mystery about Baby May.
As for the little girl herself, she was wonderfully sweet and good-natured. She cried hardly at all, but sat on a blanket on the floor and cooed and gurgled, kicked her rosy feet, fluttered her tiny hands, now and then smiling at the Bobbsey twins who bent over her or played with her.
“When will she be big enough to walk?” asked Freddie.