“Captain Clarke,” said Jane rather timidly after they had gone, “would you mind showing me that picture of your baby again?”
Captain Clarke rose and brought the photograph. Chicken Little studied it carefully, then glanced up at the Captain. Sherm certainly was like the picture–as much like it as a boy who was almost a man grown could be. Should she dare to ask him? Chicken Little felt herself growing hot and cold by turns. Her heart was beating so she thought the Captain must surely hear it. One minute she was sure she didn’t dare, the next, she remembered Sherm’s broken-hearted words about not belonging 377to anybody, and she was sure she could screw her courage up–in just a minute. Captain Clarke helped her out. He had been observing her restless movements for several minutes and was wondering if she could possibly have guessed what was in his own mind.
“Out with it, little woman, what’s troubling you?”
Chicken Little got up from her seat and went and stood close beside him. “I want to say something to you awfully, only I am afraid you–won’t like it,” she said earnestly.
“My dear child, don’t be afraid of me.”
Chicken Little summoned up her resolution.
“I wanted to ask–to ask you, if you wouldn’t adopt Sherm. You see he looks like your little boy would have looked, and he hasn’t got anybody or any name, and he isn’t going to want to live hardly, I am afraid. And I thought.... You don’t know how fine Sherm is. He’s so honorable and kind–so–so you can trust him. I just know you’d be proud of him after a while.”
Chicken Little was pleading with eyes and voice and trembling hands. The Captain gazed at her a moment in astonishment, then he tenderly drew her toward him.
“Chicken Little, I doubt if Sherm would agree to that. But if he is willing, I should be proud and happy to call him my son. But don’t get your hopes 378up–I fear Sherm is too proud to let us find any such easy solution of his troubles. But we’ll find a way to put him on his feet, you and I–we’ll find a way, if it takes every cent I have!
“I think perhaps the first thing to do, Chicken Little,” he continued after some pondering, “is to try to find out something about Sherman’s real parentage. It hardly seems possible that a comfortably dressed woman could have disappeared with her child without making some stir. I am in hopes, by getting somebody to search through the files of two or three of the leading New York newspapers immediately following the day of the accident, we might secure a clue. I shall write to Mrs. Dart at once for particulars, and then send to a man I know and pay him to make a thorough investigation.”