“He is beautiful, and as good and sweet as he is pretty,” said Mrs. Meade warmly, and Pansy exclaimed, almost passionately:
“I wish he had been left at my door! I would certainly have adopted him for my own. I love him dearly.”
“I ’ove oo!” cried little Pet, gazing into her beautiful face with shining eyes, and she strained him close to her heart again, exclaiming:
“Oh, you sweet little darling!”
Mrs. Meade gazed on the pretty scene with wonder and suspicion, asking herself why Mrs. Falconer and the child were so strongly attached to each other. She knew that Norman Wylde had been in trouble several years before on account of a pretty factory girl, who was reported to have drowned herself, but she had never heard that there was a child in the case. She wondered now if that unfortunate girl had looked like Mrs. Falconer.
“I mean to find out,” she resolved, just as Pansy looked up and asked pleadingly:
“Won’t you give me this child if my husband will allow me to adopt him? I will be like a mother to him, educate him, bring him up to a noble manhood, if he lives.”
“Would you like to go with the lady, and leave your poor old Meade, my pet?” exclaimed the housekeeper, and the little one murmured a delighted affirmative.
“You see!” cried Pansy triumphantly. “Now, may I have him?”
Mrs. Meade shook her head.