Prompted by both curiosity and interest, she went to the child, and, parting the shawl, which was closely wrapped about it, discovered an infant, which her practised eye told her could not be over a week old, if, indeed, it had seen as many days as that.
Her first thought was that the mother, or whoever had the child in charge, had left it just for the moment sleeping upon the table; then, suddenly, a terrible shock, which set every nerve in her body quivering with a painful thrill, went through her as she caught sight of a note that had been pinned to the fine flannel blanket that was wrapped about the infant under the shawl.
“Good heavens! it is an abandoned baby!” she breathed, as she mechanically but tenderly gathered it into her strong arms and tried to hush it upon her breast.
Evidently, the child had been drugged, for it dropped off to sleep almost immediately, and then Miss Porter, with trembling fingers and two scarlet spots upon her cheeks, denoting great mental excitement, detached the note from the blanket, and, opening it, read:
“Will some kind woman take this child, or see that it finds a good home where it will be well reared? Nothing but direst necessity compels her abandonment. She is well and honorably born, and yet relentless fate makes her an outcast from her own kindred. A peculiar-shaped golden key, in the form of a pin, is fastened to her clothing—it is her only heritage. Will whoever responds to this appeal insert in an early issue of the Boston Transcript under the head of personals, the following: ‘X. Y. Z.—The golden key has unlocked a responsive heart,’ and relieve the writer of this of a heavy burden?”
“H’m!” ejaculated Miss Porter, as she refolded the note, and began to look for the golden key.
She found it pinned to the yoke of the child’s dainty dress—an oddly fashioned trinket, the thumb-piece ornamented with a small pansy, in the heart of which there flashed a tiny but flawless diamond.
“Well! for once I have had a genuine adventure in my plodding, practical life!” the woman muttered to herself. “Everything about this child shows that she was born of a wealthy mother—some rich girl, maybe, whose good name was more to her than the life and welfare of her own flesh and blood. Oh, dear, what a world it is! Those who yearn for these little ones are deprived of them, while there is no place, no love for others. It is a beautiful babe, too,” she continued, bending over the little sleeper and noting the soft, curling rings of glossy brown hair on the small head, the delicate, regular features of the little face, and the dainty, perfect hands that were folded on the gently heaving breast. “Poor little waif! what shall I do with you?” she concluded, with a long-drawn, regretful sigh.
Then she sat suddenly erect, her face becoming almost as rigid as that of a statue, while she scarcely seemed to breathe, so absorbed had she become in her own startled reflections.
“Nancy Porter, I wonder if you could manage it?—I wonder if you dare do it?” she breathed at last, with lips in which there was not an atom of color. “Alice would never survive another such tax upon her delicate constitution; Adam Brewster would never be content without an heir to his great fortune. Well, I’m going to try it, and save her heart from breaking.”