"If that's your kiddie, miss, I recommend you to get it out o' this 'ere place quick—see?"
I stayed an hour or two longer because I was troubled about baby's cough; and before I left, being still uneasy, I did what I had never done before—wrote my address at the Jew's house, so that I could be sent for if I was ever wanted.
ONE HUNDREDTH CHAPTER
When I awoke next morning the last word of the broker's man seemed to be ringing in my ears.
I knew it was true; I knew I ought to remove baby from the house of the Olivers without another day's delay, but I was at a loss to know what to do with her.
To bring her to my own room at the Jew's was obviously impossible, and to advertise for a nurse for my child was to run the risk of falling into the toils of somebody who might do worse than neglect her.
In my great perplexity I recalled the waitress at the restaurant whose child had been moved to a Home in the country, and for some moments I thought how much better it would be that baby should be "bonny and well" instead of pale and thin as she was now. But when I reflected that if I took her to a public institution I should see her only once a month, I told myself that I could not and would not do so.
"I'll work my fingers to the bone first," I thought.
Yet life makes a fearful tug at a woman when it has once got hold of her, and, strangely enough, it was in the Jew's house that I first came to see that for the child's own sake I must part with her.