“Got ’em!” he said, indicating the “wurley” with a jerk of his hand. “Moses! can’t that lady run! I’d like to enter her for the Oaks! Are you girls all right?”
They nodded.
“Is it—is the kiddie——?”
“Blest if I know!” said Wally, laughing. “You said so, and so I ran. If it isn’t some one else’s youngster, then the lady in here has a mighty uneasy conscience on some other score, that’s all. But if you’ve given me that little jog-trot for nothing, young Norah——!” He broke off, endeavouring to look threatening.
“Why, I saw it laugh!” said Norah. “And it was the face of that photograph and Mrs. Archdale’s face rolled into one!”
“Never saw Mrs. Archdale with a face as black as that,” Wally rejoined. “You aren’t complimentary, Nor. Let’s have a look at them, anyway.”
But the black gin cowered back in her den, and refused to move. Persuasion and threats alike were unavailing. Finally Wally shrugged his shoulders.
“Awfully sorry to pull your house about your ears, ma’am,” he said. “But if you won’t come out, it’ll have to be. Look out, you girls—I shall stir up awful smells!”
He fulfilled his prediction as he pulled away the interlacing boughs—hygienic principles are not in vogue in an aboriginal “wurley.” It was pitifully scanty—a moment’s work sufficed to reveal the lubra and the child she grasped firmly. She tried to hold its face against her—but the baby wriggled free at the strange voices, facing the grave young faces.
Now that they were so close only a glance was needed to show that this was no black picaninny. A dark stain covered the child’s face and its legs and arms: but through it the features were those of the baby who had laughed to them from the blue wall of the little room at Mrs. Archdale’s. And there was no fear in the wide, dark eyes that met theirs—but rather an unspoken greeting, as though instinct told her that she was once more among her own kind. Norah held out her hand to her; but the black gin cowered back, holding the little body yet more closely.