“Or he may belong to a young mother who cannot longer earn a living for him,” added Mrs. Stewart.
“That’s not likely, mother,” returned Anne. “As the child would look thin and sickly if a mother found it hard to support it. I rather think it is a babe that belongs to some distracted mother in the neighborhood. He has evidently been put to bed for the night. Possibly a vindictive nurse-girl took him from his home to make his parents seek for him and then left him at the most convenient door.”
“Anne’s reason sounds the most plausible, and we’d better ’phone the police-stations at once. Billy’s parents may even now be wild with despair, for we do not know how long he was in the vestibule. All we know is, he was not there when we came in, about eight o’clock,” said Mrs. Evans.
So she telephoned the police-stations, near by, and also asked the morning papers to run a short notice under a suitable caption. Before she had finished this work, however, Master Billy began his complaints again, and now he was beginning to look as impatient as such a good-natured baby could.
“Maybe he’s hungry?” suddenly suggested Mrs. Stewart.
“That’s just what ails him—but we haven’t any bottle!” exclaimed Mrs. Evans.
“Perhaps he drinks from a cup—he is old enough to have been weaned, you know,” ventured Mrs. Latimer.
A cup of warmed milk was brought in short order, and Mrs. Stewart held it out to Anne, as she was still holding the baby. The moment Billy saw the cup, he almost leaped from Anne’s arms, and immediately began gurgling for very glee.
Everyone laughed at his antics, and Anne was about to hold the cup to his lips, when two fat hands clutched at it in a hungry endeavor to reach the contents. Of course, part of the milk spilled on his nightie but the remainder he drank greedily.
“He’s well-trained—whoever he is. I should say that he has had every attention in the past, to have him act like this at his age,” said Mrs. Latimer.