It was easy enough to begin talking. I told her a tale about being a newspaper woman out on a story; how I'd run across the baby and all the rest of it.
"I must ask your pardon," I finished up, "for disturbing you, but two things sent me here—one to know if the baby got home safe, and the other," I gulped, "to ask about a paper with some notes that I'd pinned to her skirt."
She shook her head.
It was in that very minute that I noticed the baby's ribbons were pink; they had been blue in the morning.
"Of course," I suggested, "you've had her clothes changed and—"
"Why, yes, of course," said baby's mother. "The first thing I did when I got hold of her was to strip her and put her in a tub; the second, was to discharge that gossiping nurse for letting her out of her sight."
"And the soiled things she had on—the dress with the blue ribbons?"
"I'll find out," she said.
She rang for the maid and gave her an order.
"Was it a valuable paper?" she asked.