Mrs. Nimmo mechanically felt in her pocket for her purse. "They didn't say anything about a woman being with him?"
"No, ma'am; he wouldn't talk to them much, but they said it was likely a child's trick of getting in a boat and setting himself loose."
"Would you—would you care to keep him until he is sent for?" faltered Mrs. Nimmo.
"I—oh, no, I couldn't. I've only a room in a lodging-house. I'd be afraid of something happening to him, for I'm out all day. I offered him something to eat, but he wouldn't take it—oh, thank you, ma'am, I didn't spend all that. I guess I'll have to go. Does he come from down East?"
"Yes, he is French. My son visited his house this summer, and used to pet him a good deal."
The young woman cast a glance of veiled admiration at the portrait. "And the little one ran away to find him. Quite a story. He's cute, too," and, airily patting Narcisse's curly head, she took her leave of Mrs. Nimmo, and made her way down-stairs. A good many strange happenings came into her daily life in this large city, and this was not one of the strangest.
Mrs. Nimmo sat still and stared at Narcisse. Rose had probably not been in the boat with him,—had probably not been drowned. He had apparently run away from home, and the first thing to do was to communicate with his mother, who would be frantic with anxiety about him. She therefore wrote out a telegram to Rose, "Your boy is with me, and safe and well," and ringing for Henry, she bade him send it as quickly as possible.
Then she sank again into profound meditation. The child had come to see Vesper. Had she better not let him know about it? If she applied the principles of sound reasoning to the case, she certainly should do so. It might also be politic. Perhaps it would bring him home to her, and, sighing heavily, she wrote another telegram.
In the meantime Narcisse did not awake. He lay still, enjoying the heavy slumber of exhaustion and content. He was in the house of his beloved Englishman; all would now be well.
He did not know that, after a time, his trustful confidence awoke the mother spirit in the woman watching him. The child for a time was wholly in her care. No other person in this vast city was interested in him. No one cared for him. A strange, long-unknown feeling fluttered about her breast, and memories of her past youth awoke. She had also once been a child. She had been lonely and terrified, and suffered childish agonies not to be revealed until years of maturity. They were mostly agonies about trifles,—still, she had suffered. She pictured to herself the despair and anger of the boy upon finding that Vesper did not return to Sleeping Water as he had promised to do. With his little white face in a snarl, he would enter the boat and set himself adrift, to face sufferings of fright and loneliness of which in his petted childhood he could have had no conception. And yet what courage. She could see that he was exhausted, yet there had been no whining, no complaining; he had attained his object and he was satisfied. He was really like her own boy, and, with a proud, motherly smile, she gazed alternately from the curly head on the carpet to the curly one in the portrait.