"If you please, 'm," said Peter, grinning,—if heroes can be said to grin,—"she's inside."
He opened the big old-fashioned basket he was carrying, made of osier, a kind that I remember seeing in my grandmother's attic many years ago, and there—O Pharaoh's daughter, how I understand you now!—was a little child of perhaps ten months, asleep. She had soft dark hair, hands a bit too thin for a baby, eyes that proved to be, when she wakened and opened them, big and brown; and a mouth that had learned and not forgotten, like so many sorrowful mouths to-day, how to smile.
"Where did you find her?" Madge and I cried out in one breath.
"She was in the village where I was taken when I was wounded; you will hexcuse me, 'm, but I cannot say its name, I really cannot. A woman had taken charge of her for weeks; she had been found quite deserted by the roadside, I believe, 'm, earlier in the war, when people were trying to escape from the henemy. The nurse used to bring her into the 'ospital just to let the soldiers see her."
Peter was disappointed that I could not speak, but speak I could not.
"She's a French baby, 'm," he added. "I took a great fancy to her, and when I came away I told them——"
"What did you tell them, Peter?" I asked sternly. The little thing had grasped my finger and was trying to pull herself up. It was the first touch from any of my fugitives that seemed to come from my very own, and I knew that the French baby had come into my life to stay.
"Knowing your 'abits, Miss, I told them I thought I knew a good 'ome for her, so they sent her on with a nurse who was coming back, reserved for me, as it were. They kindly allowed me to bring her down from London meself, but I 'ad difficulty in 'olding her, so I took out me clothes and put them in a paper, and she fitted very nicely in the basket."
Peter still mistook my silence for hesitation.
"I thought if you didn't care to adopt her, I would, 'm; but from what they told me about her clothing and all and from the look of her, I fancy she's rather your class than mine, 'm."