"It ain't me," she finally managed to assure him. "It's mine little brother what I gets out of the Central Park."
Lights, Mrs. Moriarty, explanations, and expostulations followed.
"I tells that Stork," Esther ended, "I tells him I ain't got no families und no aunties, und I needs a baby, und I has a bed ready. It is mine baby. Storks is crazy fools!"
But the inexorable John Nolan set out upon his mission of restitution. Esther, puzzled, heart-broken, argumentative, sped on before, and reached, not without some skirmishing, the side of the golden-haired lady, while her father was still struggling with the darkness and his unaccustomed burden.
And then the miracles began. The lady heard a step upon the stairs and a great radiance fell upon her. Wonder, incredulity, and joy shone in her lovely eyes. The doctor's hand was on her wrist. The nurse's admonitions were in her ears. But she raised herself among her pillows and watched the turn of the stairs where a shaft of light streamed through the open door.
Esther's father came out of the darkness, and the lady wrenched her hand from the doctor and stretched both her arms toward the oncoming figure, and "Jacob," said she, and quite gently fainted into the doctor's arms.
"No excitement, no fuss," commanded that authority. "She's all right, coming round in a minute. Here, stand there. Speak naturally to her. There, she's coming now."
"Why, Esther," said Jacob quietly in soft Hungarian, "I've been wondering where you were."
The lady mit the from-gold hair laid her other hand on his, smiled a little wearily, and instantly dropped asleep.
"You ain't asked her whose is that baby," his daughter whispered to him. "You ain't asked her did she write letters on that Stork?"