“Very good, sorr,” said Wipes, and saluted again. Under his stolidity was a heart much like hominy served for breakfast—as warm, as soft, as steaming with fragrant kindliness. In spite of experience, such a greeting flattered him to its depths. It was five minutes before the boy’s nervous statement made apparent impression on the slaty surface of Wipes’s intellect. Then a smile expanded slowly over the hatchet face, as if a mountainside had cracked.
“Wipes, if you grin like that I’ll kill you,” said Fitzhugh, exasperated, and Wipes answered respectfully:
“Very good, sorr.”
Fitzhugh went on. “It’s up to you to get me out of this hole. It’s the worst one yet, but you’ve never failed me, Wipesy. Now tell me what can be done? The kid’s due”—he took out his watch—“oh, momma! In an hour. Something’s got to be done, and quick.”
“If ye’d excuse me, sorr,” said Wipes, “Oi’ve ’n idea.”
“I’ll excuse you this time,” Fitzhugh agreed. “Get it out of your system.”
“F’r me to meet th’ kid, sorr, and sind him back.”
For one moment of exquisite relief Fitzhugh felt almost sentimental toward Wipes. Of course! Why had he not thought of it? He wrung the soldier’s hand till the cracked-rock smile split his face again, and then he rushed into arrangements. Wipes’s words were few and direct, and what he said he seemed to swallow back half-way out, as if with regret at the outlay. But Fitzhugh was equal to the talking. Wipes was to say that the Misses Bellingham had suddenly decided to go abroad for a year, and had given up the idea of adopting a child; that they were on the point of so writing the matron when her promptness forestalled them; the trip of attendant and child was to be paid for, so that there should be no discussion. The young man brought out some bills.
“Wipes, I’m broke, but it’s cheap at bankruptcy.”
But the soldier refused the money. “F’r me to sind in th’ bill, sorr, whin th’ job’s done,” he remarked half-way down his throat.