“It was on the night of the twenty-eighth of May, ma’am, and I feel sure it wasn’t more than an hour old—a poor little deserted newborn baby,” said Mrs. Meade, and Pansy sternly repressed a cry of joy as she hid her startled face in the boy’s plump neck, pretending to bite him, that she might hear his vociferous baby laughter.
“He is mine! It is just as I thought. I was deceived by my mother, and my child stolen from me. Oh, what am I to do, for I feel that I cannot live without him?” she thought wildly.
The little one clung to her, showering her face with kisses, and filling Mrs. Meade with wonder, for he was usually very shy of strangers.
“Would you like to see the clothes he wore when he came here?” she asked, and went away, returning presently with a bundle, which she unrolled before Pansy’s eyes.
“See this little linen shirt and gown, so neatly trimmed with crochet edging, and this fine soft flannel petticoat,” she said; and Pansy almost fainted when she saw the selfsame baby garments on which she had worked, in silence and secrecy, so many nights when she was at home, a wretched creature, looking forward with dread to her baby’s coming.
She wound her arms about the child, and said faintly:
“You ought to take good care of these things, for by their aid you might be enabled to trace the child’s mother some time.”
But she flushed deeply when Mrs. Meade answered:
“I mean to take care of them, but I don’t know as I care to trace the mother. She must be a hard-hearted creature, to abandon her baby like she did.”
“Oh, don’t judge her so hardly, please. Perhaps—perhaps—it was not her fault. They might have taken it from her,” exclaimed Pansy pleadingly, then paused in dismay, for, by the sudden lighting up of Mrs. Meade’s face, she saw that she had made a mistake in speaking so impulsively. Anxious to remove any suspicion from the woman’s mind, she went on apologetically: “Of course, the mother might have been hard-hearted. There are plenty such women, but it does seem strange that any one could desert such a beautiful child as this one.”