“What now? What's brought you here?” she demanded, in no friendly tones.
“There, there, Mother Peter! smooth down your feathers. I've got something for you to do, and it will pay,” answered Pinky, who had shut the outside door and slipped the bolt.
At this, the manner of Mother Peter, as Pinky had called her, softened, and she said,
“What's up? What deviltry are you after now, you huzzy?”
Without replying to this, Pinky began shaking the snow from Andy and unwinding the shawl with which she had bound him up. After he was free from his outside wrappings, she said, looking toward the woman,
“Now, isn't he a nice little chap? Did you ever see such eyes?”
The worn face of the woman softened as she turned toward the beautiful child, but not with pity. To that feeling she had long been a stranger.
“I want you to keep him for a few days,” said Pinky, speaking in the woman's ears. “I'll tell you more about it after he's in bed and asleep.”
“He's to be kept shut up out of sight, mind,” was Pinky's injunction, in the conference that followed. “Not a living soul in the neighborhood must know he's in the house, for the police will be sharp after him. I'll pay you five dollars a week, and put it down in advance. Give him plenty to eat, and be as good to him as you can, for you see it's a fat job, and I'll make it fatter for you if all comes out right.”
The woman was not slow to promise all that Pinky demanded. The house in which she lived had three rooms, one below and two smaller ones above. From the room below a stove-pipe went up through the floor into a sheet-iron drum in the small back chamber, and kept it partially heated. It was arranged that Andy should be made a close prisoner in this room, and kept quiet by fear. It had only one window, looking out upon the yard, and there was no shed or porch over the door leading into the yard below upon which he could climb out and make his escape. In order to have things wholly secure the two women, after Andy was asleep, pasted paper over the panes of glass in the lower sash, so that no one could see his face at the window, and fastened the sash down by putting a nail into a gimlet-hole at the top.