“A brat that some vile woman in the cars asked Roger to hold while she got out at a station. Of course she didn’t go back, and so, fool-like, he brought it home, because it was pretty, he said, and he felt so sorry for it. I always knew he had a soft spot, but I didn’t think it would show itself this way.”
It was the first time Hester had ever breathed a word of complaint against the boy Roger, whose kindness of heart and great fondness for children were proverbial; and now, sorry that she had done so, she tried to make amends by taking the struggling child from the table and freeing it from the shawl which she had carried with her to the depot, never guessing the purpose to which it would be applied. It was a very pretty, fat-faced baby, apparently nine or ten months old, and the hazel eyes were bright as buttons, Ruey said, her heart warming at once toward the little stranger, at whom Hester looked askance. There was a heavy growth of dark brown hair upon the head, with just enough curl in it to make it lie in rings about the forehead and neck. The clothes, though soiled by travelling, were neatly made, and showed marks of pains and care; while about the neck was a fine gold chain, to which was attached a tiny locket, with the initials “L. G.” engraved upon it. These things came out one by one as Hester and Ruey together examined the child, which did not evince the least fear of them, but which, when Ruey stroked its cheek caressingly, looked up in her face with a coaxing, cooing noise, and stretched its arms toward her.
“Little darling,” the motherly girl exclaimed, taking it at once from Hester’s lap and hugging it to her bosom. “I’m so glad it is here,—the house will be as merry again with a baby in it.”
“Do you think Roger will keep it? You must be crazy,” Hester said sharply, when Frank, who had divided his time between the parlor and kitchen, and who had just come from the former, chimed in:
“Yes, he will,—he told mother so. He said he always wanted a sister, and he should keep her, and mother’s rowin’ him for it.”
By this it will be seen that the child was the topic of conversation in the parlor as well as kitchen, Mrs. Walter Scott asking numberless questions, and Roger explaining as far as was possible what was to himself a mystery. A young woman, carrying a baby in her arms, and looking very tired and frightened, had come into the car at Cincinnati, he said, and asked to sit with him. She was a pretty, dark-faced woman, with bright black eyes, which seemed to look right through one, and which examined him very sharply. She did not talk much to him, but appeared to be wrapped in thoughts which must have been very amusing, as she would occasionally laugh quietly to herself, and then relapse into an abstracted mood. Roger thought now that she seemed a little strange, though at the time he had no suspicions of her, and was very kind to the baby, whom she asked him to hold. He was exceedingly fond of children, especially little girls, and he took this one readily, and fed it with candy, with which his pockets were always filled. In this way they travelled until it began to grow dark and they stopped at ——, a town fifty miles or more from Cincinnati. Here the woman asked him to look after her baby a few moments while she went into the next car, to see a friend.
“If she gets hungry, give her some milk,” she added, taking a bottle from the little basket which she had with her under the seat.
Without the slightest hesitation Roger consented to play the part of nurse to the little girl, who was sleeping at the time, and whom the mother, if mother she were, had lain upon the unoccupied seat in front. Bending close to the round, flushed face, the woman whispered something; then, with a kiss upon the lips, as if in benediction, she went out, and Roger saw her no more. He did not notice whether she went into another car or left the train entirely. He only knew that a half hour passed and she did not return; then another half hour went by; and some passengers claimed one of the seats occupied by him and his charge. In lifting the child he woke her, but instead of crying, she rubbed her pretty eyes with her little fists, and then, with a smile, laid her head confidingly against his bosom and was soon sleeping again. So long as she remained quiet, Roger felt no special uneasiness about the mother’s protracted absence, which had now lengthened into nearly two hours; but when at last the child began to cry, and neither candy, nor milk, nor pounding on the car window, nor his lead pencil, nor his jack-knife, nor watch had any effect upon her, he began to grow very anxious, and to the woman in front who asked rather sharply, “what was the matter, and what he was doing with that child alone,” he said,—
“I am taking care of her while her mother sees a friend in the next car. I wish she would come back. She’s been gone ever so long.”
The cries were screams by this time,—loud, passionate screams, which indicated great strength of lungs, and roused up the drowsy passengers, who began, some of them, to grumble, while one suggested “pitching the brat out of the window.”