When she went away Doctor Lavendar, looking after her, thrust out his lower lip. "Lydia not 'need' an eagle?" he said. "How long since?" And after a while he added, "Now, what on earth—?"
Old Chester, too, said, "What on earth—?" when, in December, Miss Lydia turned the key in her front door and, with her carpetbag and bandbox, took the morning stage for Mercer.
And we said it again, a few weeks later, when Mrs. Barkley received a letter in which Miss Lydia said she had been visiting friends in Indiana and had been asked by them to take care of a beautiful baby boy, and she was bringing him home with her, and she hoped Mrs. Barkley would give her some advice about taking care of babies, for she was afraid she didn't know much—("'Much'?" Mrs. Barkley snorted. "She knows as much about babies as a wildcat knows about tatting!")—and she was, as ever, Mrs. Barkley's affectionate Lyddy.
The effect of this letter upon Old Chester can be imagined. Mrs. Drayton said, "What I would like to know is, whose baby is it?"
Mrs. Barkley said in a deep bass: "Where will Lyddy get the money to take care of it? As for advising her, I advise her to leave it on the doorstep of its blood relations!"
Doctor Lavendar said: "Ho, hum! Do you remember what the new Mr. Smith said about her when she gave her party? Well, I agree with him!" Which (if you recall Mr. Smith's exact words) was really a shocking thing for a minister of the gospel to say!
Mrs. William King said, firmly, that she called it murder, to intrust a child to Miss Lydia Sampson. "She'll hold it upside down and never know the difference," said Mrs. King; and then, like everybody else, she asked Mrs. Drayton's question "Whose baby is it?"
There were many answers, mostly to the effect that Lydia was so scatterbrained—as witness her "party," and her blue-silk dress, and her broken engagements, etc., etc., that she was perfectly capable of letting anybody shove a foundling into her arms! Mrs. Drayton's own answer to her question was that the whole thing looked queer—"not that I would imply anything against poor Lydia's character, but it looks queer; and if you count back—"
Miss Lydia's reply—for of course the question was asked her as soon as she and the baby, and the bandbox and the carpetbag got off the stage one March afternoon—Miss Lydia's answer was brief:
"A friend's."