There was a moment's awful silence. Jimmy rose very cautiously from the cradle, his eyes sought the armchair. It had always betrayed him. He glanced toward the window. It was twelve stories to the pavement. He looked towards the opposite door; beyond that was the mad Italian woman. His one chance lay in slipping unnoticed through the hallway; he made a determined dash in that direction, but no sooner had he put his head through the door, than he drew it back quickly. The conversation between O'Flarety and the maid in the hallway was not reassuring. Jimmy decided to take a chance with the Italian mother, and as fast as he could, he streaked it toward the opposite door. The shrieks and denunciations that he met from this direction were more disconcerting than those of the Irish father. For an instant he stood in the centre of the room, wavering as to which side to surrender himself.
The thunderous tones of the enraged father drew nearer; he threw himself on the floor and attempted to roll under the bed; the space between the railing and the floor was far too narrow. Why had he disregarded Aggie's advice as to diet? The knob of the door handle was turning—he vaulted into the bed and drew the covers over his head just as O'Flarety, trembling with excitement, and pursued by Maggie, burst into the room.
“Lave go of me,” cried O'Flarety to Maggie, who clung to his arm in a vain effort to soothe him, and flinging her off, he made straight for the bed.
“Ah,” he cried, gazing with dilated nostrils at the trembling object beneath the covers, “there you are, mum,” and he shook his fist above what he believed to be the cowardly Mrs. Hardy. “'Tis well ye may cover up your head,” said he, “for shame on yez! Me wife may take in washing, but when I comes home at night I wants me kids, and I'll be after havin' 'em too. Where ar' they?” he demanded. Then getting no response from the agitated covers, he glanced wildly about the room. “Glory be to God!” he exclaimed as his eyes fell on the crib; but he stopped short in astonishment, when upon peering into it, he found not one, or two, but three “barren.”
“They're child stalers, that's what they are,” he declared to Maggie, as he snatched Bridget and Norah to his no doubt comforting breast. “Me little Biddy,” he crooned over his much coveted possession. “Me little Norah,” he added fondly, looking down at his second. The thought of his narrow escape from losing these irreplaceable treasures rekindled his wrath. Again he strode toward the bed and looked down at the now semi-quiet comforter.
“The black heart of ye, mum,” he roared, then ordering Maggie to give back “every penny of that shameless creetur's money” he turned toward the door.
So intense had been O'Flarety's excitement and so engrossed was he in his denunciation that he had failed to see the wild-eyed Italian woman rushing toward him from the opposite door.
“You, you!” cried the frenzied woman and, to O'Flarety's astonishment, she laid two strong hands upon his arm and drew him round until he faced her. “Where are you going with my baby?” she asked, then peering into the face of the infant nearest to her, she uttered a disappointed moan. “'Tis not my baby!” she cried. She scanned the face of the second infant—again she moaned.
Having begun to identify this hysterical creature as the possible mother of the third infant, O'Flarety jerked his head in the direction of the cradle.
“I guess you'll find what you're lookin' for in there,” he said. Then bidding Maggie to “git along out o' this” and shrugging his shoulders to convey his contempt for the fugitive beneath the coverlet, he swept quickly from the room.