“Little boy,” said mistress, “where do you come from?”
He turned his small, pale, rather intelligent face toward her, and said something that sounded like “Gnorrish!”
Mistress looked despairingly at her husband. “What is your mother’s name?” she asked.
This time he uttered a single syllable that sounded like “Granch!”
“Da, Da, Da has come home,” interrupted little George gleefully.
“Why, he doesn’t speak as well as our baby,” said mistress. “What shall we do about him?”
“He’s a present, evidently,” said master.
“George, come here,” said mistress, and she took her own child on her lap. Then she went on. “We don’t know what sort of a place he’s come from.”
Master pressed the electric button beside the mantel, said something in French to mistress, and when the parlour-maid came she received instructions to take the little stranger away, have him thoroughly washed, his head included, his clothes folded up and put away, and other ones put on him.
“I wonder what the mystery is about him,” said master. “Why should any one try to foist a child on us anonymously, when we are so ready to help any one? I can’t understand it.”