“Don’t worry, they won’t want him back. Besides, they’ve forfeited their right to him,” the old doctor snorted, indignantly.
Holding him high for Peter to admire
“Not legally. When the letter comes, you’ll see.” There was none of the anticipated delight in Sheila’s voice that had been there on that first night when she had laid her plans and sworn Father O’Friel into backing her up. Her voice was as colorless as her eyes were dull; for some miraculous reason the life and inner light that seemed such an inseparable part of her had suddenly gone out. She reached up and removed the atom from Peter’s shoulder.
Hennessy, who had joined the group, was the last to speak. “Sure it’s mortial good of both ye gentlemen to lift the throuble o’ raisin’ the wee one off Miss Leerie, but if any one lifts it, it’s Marm an’ me. We had that settled the next morning after we fetched him over an’ knew ’twas the real one we’d got, after all.”
“The real one? What do you mean by that?” The doctor looked puzzled.
Hennessy winked his only answer.
Through the first days of September Sheila waited with feverish anxiety. The hours spent on the vine-covered porch with the atom, asleep or awake, for steady company, and Peter for occasional, passed all too quickly. For the first time in her life Sheila wished days back; she would have put a checking hand on time had she had the power. Then just as she was making up her mind that her fear was for nothing, that her plans had gloriously failed and Pancho was to be hers for all time, the wretched news came. Peter brought it, hurrying hatless down the street, and Sheila, knowing in her heart what had happened, went down the steps to meet him.
“Is it a letter—or a wire—or what? And where’s the señora?”
“Having hysterics in front of the business office.” Peter stopped to get his breath. “The husband wired from New York—he’ll be down on the morning train. It seems the señora wired him when she first got here that Pancho was dying, so she didn’t see any need of changing it in her letter. She said she wanted the money for a monument and masses—and he could send it in a draft. Guess he thought more of the boy than the mother did, for he’s come up to bring the body home and put up the monument down there. Now she doesn’t know what to tell him. Can you beat that for straight fiction?”