"Oh, Miss Clementina," I says, "I've got a baby. At least, he's only half mine. I mean—"
Then, while she was coming toward us along the lamp-light, as if it was made to bring her, the little chap began waking up. He stirred, and budded up his lips, and said little baby-things in his throat, and begun to cry, soft and lonesome, as if he didn't understand. Oh, isn't it true? A baby's waking-up minute, when it cries a little and don't know where it is, ain't that like us, sometimes crying out sort of blind to be took care of? And when the little thing opened his eyes, first thing he saw was Miss Clementina, standing beside him. And what did that little chap do instead of stopping crying but just hold out one hand toward her, and kind of bend across, same as if he meant something.
With that the Brother-man, that Madame Proudfit hadn't had a chance yet to present to Miss Clementina, he says to her all excited:
"He wants you to kiss his hand! Kiss his hand and he'll stop crying!"
Miss Clementina looked up at him like a little question, then she stooped and kissed the baby's hand, and we three watched him perfectly breathless to see what he would do. And he done exactly what that up-hill note had said he would—he stopped crying, and he done more than it said he would—he smiled sweet and bright, and as if he knew something else about it. And we three looked at each other and at him, and we smiled, too. And it made a nice minute.
"Clementina," said Madame Proudfit, like another minute that wasn't so very well acquainted with the one that was being, and then she presented the Brother-man. But instead of a regular society, say-what-you-ought-to-say answer to her greeting, the Brother-man says to her:
"Miss Proudfit, you shall arbitrate! Somebody left him to this lady and me—or to anybody like, or unlike us—on the train. Shall we find his own mother that has run away from him? Or shall we send him to an institution? Or shall we keep him? Which way," he says, smiling, "is the way that is the way?"
She looked up at him as if she knew, clear inside his words, what he was talking about.
"Are you," she ask' him, half merry, but all in earnest too, "are you going to decide with your heart or your head?"