Millbank;

by Mary Jane Holmes

With his face very red, and the perspiration starting out about his mouth, Roger arose, and tried, by walking up and down the aisle, to hush the little one into quiet. Once he thought of going into the next car in quest of the missing mother,—then, thinking to himself that she surely would return ere long, he abandoned the idea, and resumed his seat with the now quiet child. And so another hour went by, and they were nearly a hundred miles from the place where the woman had left him. Had Roger been older, a suspicion of foul play would have come to him long before this; but, the soul of honor himself, he believed in everybody else, and not a doubt crossed his mind that anything was wrong until the woman who had first spoken to him began to question him again, and ask if it was his sister he was caring for so kindly. Then the story came out, and Roger felt as if smothering, when the woman exclaimed, “Why, boy, the child has been deserted. It is left on your hands. The mother will never come to claim it.”

For an instant the car and everything in it turned dark to poor Roger, who gasped, “You must be mistaken. She is in the next car, sure. Hold the baby, and I’ll find her.”

There was a moment’s hesitancy on the part of the woman,—a fear lest she, too, might be duped; but another look at the boy’s frank, ingenuous face, reassured her. There was no evil in those clear, blue eyes which met hers so imploringly, and she took the child in her arms, while he went for the missing mother,—went through the adjoining car and the next,—peering anxiously into every face, but not finding the one he sought. Then he came back, and went through the rear car, but all in vain. The dark-faced woman with the glittering eyes and strange smile, was gone! The baby was deserted and left on Roger’s hands. He understood it perfectly, and the understanding seemed suddenly to add years of discretion and experience to him. Slowly he went back to the waiting woman, and without a word took the child from her, and letting his boyish face drop over it, he whispered, “Your mother has abandoned you, little one, but I will care for you.”

He was adopting the poor forsaken child,—was accepting his awkward situation, and when that was done he reported his success. There was an ejaculation of horror and surprise on the woman’s part; a quick rising up from her seat to “do something,” or “tell somebody” of the terrible thing which had transpired before their very eyes. There was a great excitement now in the car, and the passengers crowded around the boy, who told them all he knew, and then to their suggestions as to ways and means of finding the unnatural parent, quietly replied, “I shan’t try to find her. She could not be what she ought, and the baby is better without her.”

“But what can you do with a baby,” a chorus of voices asked; and Roger replied with the air of twenty-five rather than fourteen, “I have money. I can see that she is taken care of.”

“The beginning of a very pretty little romance,” one of the younger ladies said, and then, as the conductor appeared, he was pounced upon and the story told to him, and suggestions made that he should stop the train, or telegraph back, or do something.

“What shall I stop the train for, and whom shall I telegraph to?” he asked. “It is a plain case of desertion, and the mother is miles and miles away from —— by this time. There would be no such thing as tracing her. Such things are of frequent occurrence; but I will make all necessary inquiries when I go back to-morrow, and will see that the child is given to the proper authorities, who will either get it a place, or put it in the poor-house.”

At the mention of the poor-house, Roger’s eyes, usually so mild in their expression, flashed defiantly upon the conductor. While the crowd around him had been talking, a faint doubt as to the practicability of his taking the child had crossed his mind. His father was dead, he had his education to get, and Millbank might perhaps be shut up, or let to strangers for several years to come. And what then could be done with Baby. These were his sober-second thoughts after his first indignant burst at finding the child deserted, and had some respectable, kind-looking woman then offered to take his charge from his hands, he might have given it up. But from the poor-house arrangement he recoiled in horror, remembering a sweet-faced, blue-eyed little girl, with tangled hair and milk-white feet, whom he had seen sitting on the door of the poor-house in Belvidere. She had been found in a stable, and sent to the almshouse. Nobody cared for her,—nobody but Roger, who often fed her with apples and candy, and wished there was something better for her than life in that dark dreary house among the hills. And it was to just such a life, if not a worse one, that the cruel conductor would doom the Baby left in his care.

“If I can help it, Baby shall never go to the poor-house,” Roger said; and when a lady, who admired the spirit of the boy, asked him, “Have you a mother?” he answered, “No, nor father either, but I have Hester”; and as if that settled it, he put the child on the end of the seat farthest away from the crowd, which gradually dispersed, while the conductor, after inquiring Roger’s name and address, went about his business of collecting tickets, and left him to himself.

That he ever got comfortably from Cleveland to Belvidere with his rather troublesome charge, was almost a miracle, and he would not have done so but for the many friendly hands stretched out to help him. As far as Buffalo, there were those in the car who knew of the strange incident, and who watched, and encouraged, and helped him, but after Buffalo was left behind he was wholly among strangers. Still, a boy travelling with a baby could not fail to attract attention, and many inquiries were made of him as to the whys and wherefores of his singular position. He did not think it necessary to make very lucid explanations. He said, “She is my sister; not my own, but my adopted sister, whom I am taking home;” and he blessed his good angel, which caused the child to sleep so much of the time, as he thus avoided notice and remarks which were distasteful to him. Occasionally, a thought of what Hester might say would make him a little uncomfortable. She was the only one who could possibly object,—the only one in fact who had a right to object,—for with the great shock of his father’s death Roger had been made to feel that he was now the rightful master at Millbank. His prospective inheritance had been talked of at once in the family of the clergyman, who had moved from Belvidere to St. Louis, and with whom Roger was preparing for college when the news of his loss came to him.