The night-porter sat in his lodge at 1 a.m., trying hard to keep off the sleep that weighed his eyelids down—that heavy sleep that all night-watchers know when nothing in the world seems worth a longer vigil.
But the man before him had been dismissed for sleeping on duty, and our night-porter had had six months out of work, so, with resolute determination, he dragged up his leaden limbs and began to pace the corridors towards the Mental Ward, where he knew the screams of the insane were generally to be relied upon to keep sleep away from any one in the neighbourhood. To-night all was quiet, and it was with a brief prayer of thanksgiving that he heard the insistent note of the electric bell, and rushed to answer it, the lethargy leaving him under the necessity of action.
A policeman entered in a blast of wind and rain, drops off his cape, making black runlets on the white stone floor. From under his arm he drew a red bundle and laid it carefully down on a mat in front of the fire. "Evening, porter, I've brought you a present from the cabbage-bed. What do you think of that for a saucy girl? Hush, my dear! don't cry," as the babe, unsettled from his warm arms, gave forth a shrill cry of displeasure. "Pretty little thing, ain't she? and left out under a laurel-bush this bitter night. Some women are worse than brutes."
The porter, who was himself a married man, picked up the babe and soothed it in practised arms. "And 'ow about the father? Something as calls itself a man 'as 'ad an 'and in this business, and druv the gal to it, may be. My old dad allus says, 'God cuss the scoundrel who leaves a poor lass to bear her trouble alone!'"
"And now," said the policeman, when the nurse, summoned by telephone, had borne off the indignant babe to the Children's Ward, "I suppose you must enter the case. I found the kid under a laurel-bush at 7, Daventry Terrace. A lady blew a whistle out of the window and said she could not sleep for a whining outside. I tried to put her off as it was cats, but she stuck to it; so, just to quiet her, I cast round with my lantern, and, sure enough, she was right. Mighty upset about it, poor woman, she was, being a single lady. However, as I told her, such things may happen in any garden, married or single."
A name was chosen for her by an imaginative member of the House Committee, remembering his classical education—Daphne Daventry—the Christian name as an everlasting reminder of her foster parent the laurel-bush.
In due season the familiar notices were posted at the police-stations offering "a reward for the discovery of person or persons unknown who had abandoned a female infant in the garden of 7, Daventry Terrace, whereby the aforesaid female infant had become chargeable to the parish"; and, the Press giving publicity to the affair, offers of adoption poured in to the Guardians—pathetic letters from young mothers whose children had died, and business-like communications from middle-aged couples, who had "weighed the matter" and were "prepared to adopt the foundling."
The Board discussed the question at their next meeting, and the Clerk was directed to inquire into the character and circumstances of the most likely applicants.
"One thing to which I should like to draw the attention of the Board," said a conscientious Guardian, "is the importance of bringing up a child in the religion of its parents."
"Seems to me, in this case," retorted a working-man member, who was also a humorist, "that it might be a good thing to try a change."