MIGNON
OR, BOOTLES’ BABY

A Novelette

By J. S. Winter

AUTHOR OF “CAVALRY LIFE” AND “REGIMENTAL LEGENDS”

ILLUSTRATED

Books you may hold readily in your hand are the most useful, after all

Dr. Johnson

NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS

1885

ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I.

It was considerably after midnight when one of three officers seated at a whist-table in the mess-room of the Cavalry Barracks at Idleminster, where the Scarlet Lancers were quartered, called out, “Bootles, come and take a hand—there’s a good chap.”

Captain Algernon Ferrers, more commonly known as “Bootles,” looked up.

“I don’t mind if I do,” he said, rising and moving towards them. “What do you want me to do? Who’s my partner?”

The three other men stared at one another in surprise, for Bootles was one of the best whist-players in the regiment, and in an ordinary way would as soon have thought of counting honors as of settling the questions of partners other than by cutting, except in the case of a revenge.

“Why, take a card, of course, my friend,” laughed Lacy, in a ridiculously soft voice. Lacy was a recent importation from the White Dragoons, and had taken possession of the place left vacant in Bootles’s every-day life by Scott Laurie’s marriage.

“Ah, yes; to be sure—cut, of course. I believe,” said Bootles, looking at the three faces before him in an uncertain way—“I believe I’ve got a headache.”

“Oh, nothing like whist for a headache,” answered Hartog, turning up the last card. “Ace of diamonds.” However, after stumbling through one game—after twice trumping his partner’s trick, a revoke, and several such like blunders—he rose to his feet.

“It’s no use, you fellows; I’m no good to-night—I can’t even see the cards. Get some one to take my place and make a fresh start.”

“Why, you’re ill, Bootles,” cried Preston. “What is it?”

“It’s a devil of a headache,” answered Bootles, promptly. “Here’s Miles—the very man. Goodnight.”

“Good-night,” called the fellows after him. Then they settled down to their game, and Preston dealt.

“Never saw Bootles seedy before,” said Lacy.

“Oh yes; he gets these headaches sometimes,” answered Hartog. “Not often, though. Miles, your lead.”

Meantime Bootles went wearily away, almost feeling his road under the veranda of the mess-rooms, along the broad pavé in front of the officers’ quarters, and up the wide flight of stone steps to his rooms facing the green of the barrack square. Being the senior captain, with only one bachelor field-officer in the regiment, he had two large and pleasant rooms, not very grandly furnished, for, though a rich man, he was not an extravagant one, and saw no fun in having costly goods and chattels to be at the tender mercies of soldier servants; but they were neat, clean, and comfortable, with a sufficiency of great easy travelling-chairs, plenty of fur rugs, and lots of pretty little pictures and knickknacks.

The fire in his sitting-room was fast dying out, but a bright and cheerful blaze illumined his sleeping-room, shining on the brass knobs of his cot, on the silver ornamentations at the corners of his dressing-case, on three or four scent bottles on the tall cretonne-petticoated toilette table, and on the tired but resplendent figure of Bootles himself.

He dragged the big chair pretty near to the fire, and dropped into it with a sigh of relief, absolutely too sick and weary to think about getting into bed just then. As Hartog had said, sometimes these headaches seized him, but it did not happen often; in fact, he had not had one for more than a year—quite often enough, he said.

Well, he had been lying in the big and easy chair, his eyes shut and his hands hanging idly over the broad straps which served for arms, for perhaps half an hour, when to his surprise he heard a soft rustling movement behind him. His first and not unnatural thought was that the fellows had come to draw him, so, without moving, he called out, “Oh! confound it all, don’t come boring a poor devil with a headache. By Jove, it’s cruelty to animals, neither more nor less.”

The soft rustling ceased, and Bootles closed his eyes again, with a devout prayer that they would, in response to this appeal, take themselves off. But presently it began again, accompanied by a sound which made his heart jump almost into his mouth, and beat so furiously as to be simply suffocating. It stopped—was repeated—“The—DEVIL,” muttered Bootles.

But it was not the devil at all—more like a little angel, in truth; for after a moment’s irresolution he sprang from his chair and faced the horror behind him. It really was a horror to him, for there, sitting up among the pillows of the cot, with the clothes pushed back, was a baby, a baby whose short golden curls shone in the fire-light—a little child dressed in white, with a pair of wide-open, wondering eyes, as bright as stars and as blue as sapphires.

Bootles stood in dismay staring at it.

“Where, in the name of all that’s wonderful, did you come from?” he asked aloud, keeping at a safe distance lest it should suddenly start howling.

But the little stranger did not howl; on the contrary, as its bewildered eyes fell upon Bootles’s resplendent figure, his gold-laced scarlet jacket and gold-embroidered waistcoat of white velvet, his gold-laced overalls and jingling spurs, it stretched out its little arms and cried, “Boo, boo, boo—!”

Bootles took a step back in his surprise, and his headache vanished as if by magic.

“By—Jove!” he exclaimed.

“Boo—boo—boo!” crowed the usurper of the cot, cheerily.

Bootles went a step nearer. “Why, you’re a queer little beggar,” he remarked. “Where did you come from, eh?”

The “queer little beggar” suddenly changed its tone, and started another system of crowing more triumphant and cheery than the first.

“Chucka—chucka—chucka—chuck!” it went.

Bootles began to laugh. “Can’t talk, hey? Well, what do you want?” as it struggled fiercely to rise, and stretched out its small arms more impatiently than before. “Want to be lifted up, hey? Oh, but dash it,” scratching his head perplexedly, “I can’t lift you up, you know; it’s out of the question—impossible. By Jove, I might let you drop and smash you!”

“Chucka—chucka—chucka! Boo—oo—oo!” gobbled the baby, as if it were the best joke in the world.

Bootles positively roared.

“You don’t mind? Well, come along, then,” approaching very gingerly, and wondering where he should begin to get hold of it, so to speak.

The baby soon settled that question, holding out its arms towards his neck. Then somehow he gathered it up and carried it in doubt and trepidation to the big chair by the fire, where the creature sat contentedly upon his knee, the curly golden head resting against his scarlet jacket, the soft fingers of one baby hand tight twined round one of his, the other picking and wandering aimlessly about the scrolls and curves of the gold embroidery on his waistcoat.

“By Jove! you’re a jolly little chap,” said Bootles, just as if it could understand him. “But the question is, where did you come from, and what’s to be done with you? You can’t stop here, you know.”

The babe’s big blue eyes raised themselves to his, and the fingers which had been twined round his made a grab at his watch-chain.

“Gar—gar—garr—rah!” it remarked, in such evident delight that Bootles laughed again.

“Oh, you like it, do you? Well, you’re a queer little beggar; no mistake about that. I wonder whom you belong to, and where you live when you are at home? Can’t be a barrack child—too dainty-looking and not slobbery enough. And this dress”—taking hold of the richly embroidered white skirt—“this must have cost a lot; and it’s all lace too.”

He knew what embroidery cost by his own mess waistcoats and his tunics. Then not only was the dress of the child of a very costly description, but its sleeves were tied up with Cambridge blue ribbons that were evidently new, and its waist was encircled by a broad sash of the same material and tint. Altogether it was just such a child as he was occasionally called upon to admire in the houses of his married brother officers; yet that any lady in the regiment would lend her baby for a whole night to a set of harum-scarum young fellows for the purpose of playing a trick on a brother officer was manifestly absurd. And besides that, Bootles was so good-natured and such a favorite with the ladies of the regiment that he thought he knew all their babies by sight, and he became afraid that this one was indeed a little stranger in the land, welcome or unwelcome.

Yet if it was the fellows’ doing, where had they got it? And if it was not the fellows’ doing, why should any one leave a baby asleep in his cot? The whole thing was inexplicable.

Just then the child, in playing with his chain, slipped a little on the smooth cloth of his overalls, and Bootles, with a “Whoa! whoa, my lad!” hauled it up again. In doing so he felt a piece of paper rustle somewhere about the embroidered skirt.

“A note. This grows melodramatic,” said Bootles, craning his head to find it. “Oh, here we are! Now we shall see.”

The note was written in a firm, large, yet thoroughly feminine hand, and ran thus:

“You will not absolve me from my oath of secrecy respecting our marriage, though now that I have offended you, I may starve or go to the work-house. I cannot break my oath, though you have broken all yours, but I am determined that you shall acknowledge your child. I am going to leave her to-night in your rooms with her clothes. By midnight I shall be out of the country. I do this because I have obtained a good situation, and because when I reach my destination I shall have spent my last shilling. I give you fair warning, however, that if you desert the child, or fail to acknowledge her, I will break my oath and proclaim our marriage. If you engage a nurse she will not be much trouble. She is a good and sweet-tempered child, and I have called her Mary, after your dear mother. Oh, how she would pity me if she could see me now! Farewell.”

From that moment Bootles absolved “the fellows” from any share in the affair; but what to do with the child he had not the least idea.

“It is the very devil,” he said aloud, watching the busy fingers still playing with his chain.

He gathered it awkwardly in his arms, and rose to look for the clothing spoken of in the letter. Yes, there it was, a parcel of goodly size, wrapped in a stout brown paper cover, and on the chair beside his cot lay the out-door garments of a young child—a white coat bordered with fur, a fur-trimmed cap, and some other things, which Bootles did not quite understand the use of; white wool fingerless gloves (at least he did not know what else they could be), and some longer things of the same class, like stockings without feet.

Bootles shook his head bewilderingly. “Mother means it to stop; I don’t know what to do,” he said, helplessly.

It occurred to him then that perhaps some of the fellows might be able to make a suggestion. He did not know what to do with the child for the night, nor, for the matter of that, what to do with it for the moment. He had the sense not to take it out into the chill midnight air, and when he attempted to put it back into the cot it rebelled, clinging to his watch-chain with might and main.

“Well, have it then,” he said, slipping it off.

The baby, pleased with the glittering toy, set up a cry of delight, and Bootles took the opportunity of slipping out. He entered the anteroom with a very rueful face, finding it pretty much as he had left it. Lacy was the first to catch sight of him.

“Halloo, Bootles, what’s the mat-tah?” he asked. “Is your head worse?”

“My head? Oh, I forgot all about it,” Bootles replied. “But, I say, I’m in a mess. There’s a baby in my room.”

“A WHAT?” they cried, with one voice.

“A baby,” repeated Bootles, dismally.

“Al—ive?” asked Lacy, with his head on one side.

“Alive! Oh, very, very much so, and means to stop, for it has brought its entire wardrobe and a letter of introduction with it,” holding the letter for any one to take who chose. It was Lacy who did so, and he asked if he should read it up.

“Yes, do,” said Bootles, dropping into a chair with a groan. “Perhaps some one else will own to it.”

So Lacy read the letter in his ridiculous drawl of a voice, and ceased amid profound silence—“Fa-ah-well!”

“Well?” said Bootles, finding no one seemed inclined to speak. “Well?”

“Well,” said Preston, solemnly, “if you want my opinion, Bootles, I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

A general laugh followed, but Bootles protested.

“Oh, don’t imagine it’s me. I’ve nothing to do with it. I shouldn’t have come to you fellows if I had.”

“No, no, of course not,” returned Miles, promptly, but with an air which raised another shout.

“Then it’s a plant,” announced Preston, in a tone of conviction.

“Of course it’s a plant,” cried Bootles; “but why in the wide world should it be planted on me?”

“Why, indeed?” echoed Miles, feelingly.

“Besides,” Bootles continued, “some of you know my mother, and that her name was not Mary but Margaret.”

Now as several of those present had known Lady Margaret Ferrers very well, that was a strong point in favor of Preston’s assertion that the affair was a plant. The chief question, however, was what could be done with the little stranger for that night. Some woman, of course, must look after it, but who? It was then after two o’clock, and the lights had been out hours ago in the married people’s quarters. Bootles did not know what to do, and said so.

“Is it in your room now?” Preston asked.

“Yes.”

“Where did you find it?”

“In my cot.”

“The devil you did! I wonder you weren’t frightened out of your very wits.”

“I nearly was,” Bootles admitted.

“Did you see it at once? Was it howling?”

“Howling? Not a bit of it. Never saw a jollier little beggar in all my life.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Miles, blankly. “I say, you fellows, don’t that sound to you very much like the proud pap—ah?”

“You fellows” all laughed at this, even perplexed Bootles, and Hartog asked a question.

“Did you see it directly, Bootles?”

“Oh no; not for half an hour or more.”

“What on earth did you do?”

“Why, I looked at it of course. What would you have done?”

“Did you touch it?”

Bootles laughed. “Yes, by Jove, the little beggar came to me like a bird.”

“Great gods!” uttered Miles, “and you can doubt the fatherliness of that!”

“Oh, what an ass you are!” returned Hartog; then, as if by a bright inspiration, suggested, “I say, let’s go and have a look at it.”

Thereupon the assembled officers, five of them, trooped along the way Bootles had stumbled over alone in the blindness of his now forgotten headache. The baby was still in the cot, contentedly playing with the watch and chain, and at the sight of the five resplendent figures it set up a loud “Boo—boo—boo—ing,” followed by a “Chucka—chucka—chucka—ing.” Evidently it considered this was the land of Goshen.

“Seems to take after its mother in its love for a scarlet jacket,” remarked Miles, sententiously. “I’ve heard that the child is father of the man—seems of the woman too.”

“Bootles,” said Lacy, gravely, “isn’t it very pwretty?”

“Yes, poor little beggar.”

“Let’s see you nurse it,” cried Hartog.

So Bootles, proud of this new accomplishment, lifted the child awkwardly in his arms, pretty much as he might have done if it had been a sackful of eggs, and he had made a wager he wouldn’t break one of them. He carried it to the fire.

Let’s go and have a look at it

“Just light the candles, one of you,” he said.

“It’s the image of Bootles,” persisted Miles.

“Well, it isn’t mine, except by deed of gift,” returned Bootles, with a laugh.

“Bootles,” said Lacy, “look back over your past life—” Here he made a pause.

“Well?” said Bootles, expectantly.

“Twry to think if you can twrace any likeness to some early love, who may have marwried—or, for that matter, not have marwried—some one else, and—er—wremembering your kind heart—for you have a dashed kind heart, Bootles, there’s no denying it—may have found herself hard up or too much encumbered—for—er—you know, a babay is sometimes an awkward addition to a lady’s belongings—and may have twrusted to your—er—general—well, shall we say softness of chawracter to see it well pwrovided for—er—see?”

“No, I don’t. Of course I see what you mean, but I can’t—”

“Well—er—” Lacy broke in, “I—er—pewraps was not thinking so much of your case as of my own. You see,” appealing to the other three, “the advent of this—er—babay cwreates a precedent, and—er—if it should chance to occur to my first love—it would be awkward—for me, very awkward. Her name,” plunging headlong into a story they all knew, “was Naomi, and—er—she—er—in fact, jilted me for an elephantine parson, whose reverend name was—er—Fligg, Solomon Fligg. Now, if Mrs.—er—Solomon Fligg was to take it into her head to pack up the—er—eleven little Fliggs and send ’em to me—it would be what I should call awkward—devilish awkward.” Lacy’s four hearers positively roared, and the baby on Bootles’s knee chuckled and crowed with delight.

“I believe it understands,” Preston laughed.

“No. But it seems a jolly little chap,” answered Bootles. “Oh, I forgot, ’tis a girl. I say, I do wish you fellows would advise me what to do. How can I get any one to attend to it?”

“Oh, roll it up in the bedclothes and sleep on the sofa. It will go to sleep when it’s tired,” said one.

“With its clothes on?” said Bootles, doubtfully. “I rather fancy they undress babies when they put ’em to bed.”

“I don’t advise you to try. Oh, it won’t hurt for to-night.”

Bootles, proud of his new accomplishment, lifted the child awkwardly in his arms

“There’s a cab just driven up. I believe it’s the Grays. I saw them go out dressed before dinner,” said Hartog. The Grays were the adjutant and his wife, who lived in barracks. “She would help you in a minute.”

“Oh, go and see; there’s a good chap,” Bootles cried, eagerly.

Hartog therefore went out. He found that it was the adjutant with his wife returning from a party, and to the lady he addressed himself. “Oh, Mrs. Gray, Bootles is in such trouble—” he began.

“In trouble?—Bootles?—Captain Ferrers?” she said. “What is the matter?”

“Well, he’s got a baby,” Hartog answered.

“Got WHAT?” Mrs. Gray cried.

“A baby. It’s been left in his rooms, clothes and all, and Bootles don’t know what the de—, what in the world, I mean, to do with it.”

“Shall I go in and see it?” Mrs. Gray asked.

“I wish you would. Some of the others are there.”

Well, eventually Mrs. Gray carried off the little stranger to her own quarters, and put it to bed. As for Bootles, he too went to bed, but during the whole of that blessed night he never slept a wink.

CHAPTER II.

When Bootles showed his face in the mess-room the following morning he was greeted by such a volley of chaff as would have driven a more nervous man, or one less of a favorite than himself, to despair. Already the story had gone the round of the barracks, and Bootles found the greater part of his brother officers ready and willing to take Miles’s view of the affair, whether in chaff or downright good earnest he could not say.

“Halloo! Bootles, my man,” shouted one when he entered, “what’s this story we hear? Is it possible that Bootles—our immaculate and philanthropical Bootles— Oh, Bootles! Bootles! how are the mighty fallen!”

“Hey?” inquired Bootles, sweetly.

“I wouldn’t have believed it of you, Bootles; I wouldn’t indeed. Any other fellow in the regiment—that soft-headed Lacy grinning over there, for instance—but our Bootles—” He broke off as if words could not express the volumes he thought, but found his tongue and went on again before Bootles could open his mouth. “Our Bootles with an unacknowledged wife sworn not to disclose her marriage—our Bootles with a baby—our Bootles a papa! Oh lor!”

“Why didn’t you manage better, Bootles?” cried another. “You might have sent her an odd fiver now and then. You have plenty.”

“Is she pretty, Bootles?” asked a third.

“Was there by any chance a flaw in the marriage?” inquired a fourth.

“Do you think I’m a fool?” asked Bootles, pleasantly. “I tell you it’s a plant. I know nothing about the creature.”

“Just my view,” struck in Miles. “Just what I said last night. It’s absurd, you know, to expect him to own it. No fellow would. Besides, does Bootles look like the father of a fine bouncing baby that goes ‘Chucka, chucka, chuck?’ It’s absurd, you know.”

Even Bootles joined in the laugh which followed, and Miles continued:

“The only thing is—and it really is awkward for Bootles—the extraordinary likeness. Blue eyes, golden hair, fair complexion. I should say myself”—looking at his comrade critically, “that at the same age Bootles was just such a baby as that which turned up so mysteriously last night.”

“That’s as may be. Any way, the youngster is not mine,” said Bootles, emphatically; “and what to do with the little beggar I don’t know.”

“Send it back to its mother,” suggested Dawson.

“But I don’t know who the mother is,” Bootles answered, impatiently.

“Oh no; so you say. Well, then, the brat must have growed, like Topsy. If I were you I should send it to the police-station.”

“The police-station? Oh no; hang it all, the poor little beggar has done nothing to start the world in that way,” Bootles answered.

“Did any of you,” asked Miles of the general company, “ever hear of a chap called Solomon?”

“I—er—did,” answered Lacy, promptly. “His other name was—er—Fligg. The Reverend Solomon Fligg.”

“Oh, we’ve all heard of him! but I meant a rather more celebrated person. There is a story about him—I rather think it’s in Proverbs”—eliciting a yell of laughter. “Not Proverbs? Well, perhaps it’s in the Song of Solomon. It’s about two mothers, who each had a baby, and one of them managed to smother hers in the night, and finding it dead when she woke up in the morning, claimed the other baby. Of course the other woman kicked up a row, a regular shindy, and they came before Solomon to get the matter settled. ‘Both claim it,’ said he. ‘Oh, chop it in half, and let each have a share—’ But you all know the rest. How the real mother gave up her claim sooner than see the child halved. Now in this case, you see, Bootles hasn’t the heart to send the child off to the police-station, as he would if—”

“Here’s the colonel,” said some one at this point, and in less than two seconds he appeared.

“Why, Ferrers,” he said, “I’ve been hearing a queer tale about you.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bootles, dismally; “and where it will end I don’t know! Here am I saddled—”

“Well, of course you know whether the child has any claim upon you—” the colonel began.

“Upon my honor it has not, colonel,” said Bootles, earnestly.

“Then that, of course, settles the question,” replied the colonel, with a frown at the grinning faces along the table. “I should send the child to the workhouse immediately.”

“The workhouse?” repeated Bootles, reflectively.

“I’ll bet any one a fiver he don’t,” murmured Miles to his neighbors.

“Not he. Madame la Mère knew what she was doing when she picked out Bootles. He’ll get one of the sergeants’ wives to look after it; see if he don’t.”

After the chief had left the room, Bootles continued his breakfast in silence, considering the two suggestions for the disposal of the child. Now, if the truth be told, Bootles had a horror of workhouses. He had gone deeply into the “Casual” question, and pitied a tramp from the very inmost recesses of his kind heart. It fairly made him sick to think of that bonny golden head growing up among the shorn and unlovely locks of a pauper brood—to think of the little soft fingers that had twined themselves so confidently about his own, and had picked at the embroideries of his mess waistcoat, being slapped by the matron, or set as soon as they should be strong enough to do coarse and hard work, to develop into the unnaturally widened and unkempt hand of a “Marchioness”—to think of that little dainty thing being nourished on skilly, or on whatever hard fare pauper children are fed—to think of that little aristocrat being brought up among the children of thieves and vagabonds!

“Oh, confound it all,” he broke out, “I can’t.”

“I never expected you could,” retorted Miles. “It wouldn’t be natural if you did.”

This time Bootles did not laugh; on the contrary, he looked up and regarded Miles with a grave and searching gaze, rather disconcerting to that quizzical young gentleman.

“Are you judging me out of your own bushel?” he asked.

“How? What do you mean?” Miles stammered.

“Do you happen to know anything of the matter?” Bootles persisted.

“I? Oh no. On my honor I don’t.”

“Ah! As the colonel said just now, that settles the question. You’re a very witty fellow, Miles, very. I shouldn’t wonder, after a while, if you ain’t quite the sharp man of the regiment. Only your jokes are like the clown’s jokes at the circus—one gets to know them. They’re in this kind of way:

“‘Ever been in Paris, Mr. Lando?’

“‘Yes, of course, Bell.’

“‘Ever been in Vienna, Mr. Lando?’

“‘To be sure, Bell.’

“‘Ever been in Geneva, Mr. Lando?’

“‘Of course I have, Bell.’

“‘Ever been in jail, Mr. Lando?’

“Of course I have, Bell—at least—that’s to say—I mean—no, of course I haven’t.’

“‘Why, Mr. Lando, I saw you there.’

“‘You saw me in jail, Bell? And what were you doing to see me?’

“Oh!’ grandly, ‘I was staying with the governor for the good of my ’ealth.’

“‘And hadn’t stealing a cow something to do with it, eh, Bell?’

“‘Yah. Who stole a watch?’

“‘A Jersey cow, eh, Bell?’

“Yah. What time is it, Mr. Lando?’

“‘Just about milking time, Bell, my friend.’

“It’s all very funny once, you know, Miles,” Bootles ended, disdainfully. “But when you’ve been to the circus half a dozen times you don’t see anything to laugh at, somehow.”

For grace’s sake Miles was obliged to laugh, for every one else roared, except Bootles, who went on speaking very gravely:

“I know it’s very amusing to make a joke of the affair, to say I know more about it than I will confess. I have told the colonel on my honor that the child is not mine, nor do I know whose it is. If it were mine I should not have made the story public property—it’s not in reason that I should. My difficulty is what to do with it. The colonel suggests the workhouse, Dawson the police-station—one simply means the other, and I can’t bring me to do it. It is an awful thing for the child of a tramp or a thief to be reared in a workhouse—and this is no common person’s child. For anything I know it may belong to one of you.”

“That’s true enough,” observed a man who had not yet taken part in the discussion, except to laugh now and then. “But remember, Bootles, if you saddle yourself with the child you will have to go on with it. It will stick to you like a burr, and though we are all ready to accept your word of honor, the world may not be so. If you put the brat out to nurse in the regiment, the story may crop up years hence, just when you least desire or expect it; and, you know, a story—mixed and confused by time and repetition—about a deserted wife may come to have a very ugly sound about it. Now if, as the colonel suggests, you send the child to the workhouse, you wash your hands of the whole business. Then, again, if the brat is brought up in the regiment, with the disadvantage of your protection, what will she be in twenty years’ time? Neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. Far better the oblivion of pauperism than the distinction among the men of being Captain Ferrers’s—shall we say protégée?”

“Yes, there’s a great deal in that,” Bootles admitted. He had at all times a great respect for Harkness, and profound faith in the soundness of his judgment. He saw at once that any plan of bringing the child up among the married people of the regiment would not do, and yet—the workhouse.

He rose from the table and settled his forage cap upon his head. “I dare say you fellows will laugh at me,” he said, almost desperately, as he pulled the chin-strap over his mustache, “but I can’t condemn that helpless thing to the workhouse—I can’t, and that’s all about it. It seems to me,” he went on, rubbing the end of his whip on the back of a chair, and looking at no one—“it seems to me that the child’s future in this world and the next depends upon the course I take now. And you may laugh at me—I dare say you will,” he said, quite nervously for him—“but I shall get a proper nurse to take charge of it, and I shall keep it myself until some one turns up to claim it—or—or for good.”

“I can’t condemn that helpless thing to the workhouse”

Just then officers’-call sounded, and Bootles made a clean bolt of it, leaving his brother officers staring amazedly at one another. The first of them to make a move was Lacy—the first, too, to speak.

“Upon my soul,” said he, “Bootles is a devilish fine fellow; and, d— it all,” he added, getting very red, and scarcely drawling, in his intense rage of admiration, “if there were a few more fellows in the world like him, it would be a vewry diffewrent place to what it is.”

CHAPTER III.

As soon as Bootles had a spare moment he made his way to the adjutant’s quarters, where he found Mrs. Gray playing with the mysterious baby.

“Oh, is that you, Captain Ferrers?” she exclaimed. “Come and see your waif. She is the dearest little thing. Why, I do believe she knows you.”

Bootles whistled to the child, which promptly made a grab at his chain, and when he sat down on the sofa on which it was sprawling, tried very hard to get at the gold badge on his collar. Shoulder badges had not then come in.

“Mrs. Gray,” Bootles said, “she’s very well dressed, is she not?”

“Oh, very,” Mrs. Gray answered, smoothing out the child’s skirt so as to display the fine and deep embroidery. “Unusually so. All its clothes are of the finest and most expensive description.”

“I thought so; it doesn’t look like a common child, eh?”

“Not at all,” replied the lady, promptly.

Mignon’s Own–Illustration

“Well,” Bootles told her, “I’ve been most unmercifully chaffed, which was only to be expected; but the colonel takes my word about it, and of course the others don’t matter. I can’t think, though, why the mother has chosen me.”

“All, well, you see, Captain Ferrers,” said the adjutant’s wife, with a smile, “it is rather inconvenient sometimes to have a character for great kindness of heart. I should say you are the greatest favorite in the regiment, and, naturally enough, the officers speak of it sometimes in society. ‘Oh, Bootles is this, and Bootles is that;’ ‘Bootles wouldn’t turn a dog from his door;’ ‘Bootles would share his last sixpence with a poor chap who was down,’ and so on. I have heard, Captain Ferrers, of your emptying your pockets to divide among three poor tramps who had begged no more than a pipe of tobacco. I have heard of your standing up for”—with a deeper smile—“the poor devils of casuals; and if I hear it, why not others? why not the mother of this child?”

“True. But I think you all overrate my character,” Bootles replied, modestly. “You know I don’t go in for being saintly at all.”

“That is just it. If you did you would have no more influence than Major Allardyce, whom every one laughs at. But you don’t; you are one of themselves, and yet you will always help a man who is down; you will do any unfortunate creature a good turn. Oh, I hear a good deal, though you choose to make light of it. And you know, Captain Ferrers, we are not told that the good Samaritan made a great spluttering about what he did; but the professional saints, the priest and the Levite, passed by on the other side.”

“You are very complimentary,” Bootles said, blushing a little; “much more than I deserve, I’m sure. The fellows”—laughing at the remembrance—“were much less merciful. Then about the child. Dawson suggests sending it to the police-station, the colonel to the workhouse; and one means the other, of course.”

Mrs. Gray caught the child to her breast with a cry of dismay, and Bootles went on:

“Yes, I feel as you do about it. I can’t do it, and that’s all about it. It would be on my conscience all my life. Besides, some day the mother might come back for it, and though of course, as the colonel says, there is no claim upon me, yet, if for the sake of a few pounds I had turned the poor little beggar adrift, ruined its life—why I simply couldn’t face her, and that’s all about it. And besides that, Mrs. Gray, I have a lurking suspicion that the letter is genuine, and that it was not written to or intended for me. It reads to me like the letter of a woman who was desperate.”

“Yes, a woman must have been desperate indeed to willingly part with such a child as that,” said Mrs. Gray, smoothing the gold baby curls.

“So I think, for nature is nature all the world over,” Bootles answered. “And besides, to tell you the honest truth, there is a resemblance in the child to some one I knew once—”

“Yes?” eagerly.

“Oh no, not that! She is dead. She was engaged to a fellow I knew, desperately fond of him, and he—jilted her.”

“Mr. Kerr?”

Bootles stared. “Who told you?”

“He told me himself, I think to ease his mind,” she answered, quietly.

“Ah! Well, it killed her. She died heart-broken. I saw her,” he said, rising and going to the window, whence he stood staring out over the square, “a few hours after she died. That child’s mother may look like that now, and I can’t and won’t turn it adrift, whatever the fellows or any one else chooses to think or say, and that’s all about it.”

Two bright tears gathered in Mrs. Gray’s eyes, and falling, fell upon the baby’s curls of gold, two priceless diamonds from the unfathomable and exhaustless mines of pity. For a moment or two there was silence, broken at last by the child’s laugh, as a ray of sickly winter sunshine fell upon the glittering chain in its little hands. The sound recovered Bootles, who turned from the window.

“And so, Mrs. Gray,” he said, carefully avoiding the gaze of her wet eyes, “I have determined to keep the little beggar; but Harkness, who’s no fool, you know, has convinced me that it won’t do to trust to any of the barrack women to look after her. Therefore, if you won’t mind undertaking it for a few days, I will advertise for a respectable elderly nurse to take entire charge of the creature. I dare say I can arrange with Smithers for an extra room, and you’ll let me come to you for advice now and then, won’t you?”

Mrs. Gray rose and went close to him, laying her hand upon his arm. “Captain Ferrers,” she said, earnestly, “you will have your reward. God will bless you for this.”

Mrs. Gray rose and went close to him, laying her hand upon his arm

“Oh, please don’t, Mrs. Gray,” Bootles stammered. “Really I’d rather you’d chaff me.”

Mrs. Gray laughed outright. “Well, you know what my sentiments are, so for the future I will chaff you unmercifully.—Come in,” she added, in a louder tone, as a “tap-tap” sounded on the door.

The permission was followed by the entrance of Lacy, who came in with a pleasant “Good—er—morning,” and a soft laugh at the sight of the baby on the sofa.

“I—er—thought old Bootles would be here,” he explained. “And besides—I—er—wanted to see the babay. Seems to me, Bootles,” he added, staring with an absurd air of reflective wisdom at the infant, “as if the face is somehow familiar to me. Oh, I don’t mean you. It isn’t a bit like you. But there is a likeness, though I don’t know where to plant it.”

“Perhaps it will grow,” suggested Bootles.

“Ah! pewraps it will, and pewraps it won’t. The worst of the affair is that it is cwreating a pwrecedent”—not for worlds would he have admitted to his friend that he thought him the fine fellow he had declared him in the mess-room that morning—“and if we are all inundated with babays I wreally don’t know” (plaintively) “what the wregiment will come to.”

“Gar—ah—gar—ah!” chuckled the subject of this speech over the gold knob at the top of Lacy’s whip. “Cluck—cluck—cluck!”

“Little beggah seems to find it a good joke, any way,” Lacy cried. “I’m a gwreat hand at nursing. Our adjutant’s wife in the White Dwragoons had thwree—all at once. I say, Mrs. Gwray, stick something on it, and I’ll take it out and show it wround.”

“Dare you?” she asked.

“Dawre I? Just twry. By-the-bye, it’s cold this morning—vewry cold.”

Mrs. Gray therefore fetched the child’s white coat and cap and those other white woollen articles, which Bootles now discovered to be leggings, and quickly transformed the little woman into a sort of snowball. The two men watched the operation with intense interest.

“La figlia del wreggimento,” laughed Lacy. “I declare, Bootles, she’s quite a credit to us. I never saw such a petite mademoiselle.”

Bootles started. It reminded him who had been jilted by his friend and died for love. He had always called her Mademoiselle Mignon.

“Mademoiselle Mignon,” he said, carelessly; “not a bad name for her.”

“Vewry good,” returned Lacy, preparing to present arms.

He proved himself a much better nurse than Bootles. He gathered the child on his left arm and marched off to the anteroom, in front of which the officers were standing about, waiting for church. They set up a shout at the sight of him, and crowded round to inspect the new importation. Mademoiselle Mignon bore the inspection calmly, conscious perhaps—as she was such a knowing little person—of the effect of her big, blue, star-like eyes under the white fur of her cap.

“What a pity she ain’t twenty years older!” was the first comment, and it was said in such a tone of genuine regret that all the fellows laughed again. Miss Mignon gobbled with satisfaction.

“Seems a jolly little beggar,” said another.

“Chut—chut—chut!” remarked Miss Mignon.

“Never saw such a jolly little beggar in all my life,” asserted another voice.

“Pretty work she’ll make in the regiment sixteen or seventeen years hence,” grumbled old Garnet.

“Ah, well, nevah mind, Garnet—nevah you mind, Major Garnet, sir,” cried Hartog, “we shall all be dead by then;” but this being an exceedingly old and threadbare regimental joke was instantly snubbed in the face of the new and substantial one.

“Has it any teeth?” demanded Miles, the orderly officer for the day.

“Don’t know. Open your mouth, little one,” said Lacy, gravely.

At this point Miss Mignon made a delighted lunge in the direction of the belt across Miles’s breast. Lacy shouted, “Whoa, whoa,” and Miles immediately backed out of reach. Miss Mignon’s mouth went dismally down, until Lacy remembered the knob of his whip, and held it up for delectation.

“Boo—boo!” she crowed.

“By Jove! She can half say Bootles already,” ejaculated Hartog. “And here he comes.”

“Now, then,” Bootles called out, “have any of you fellows made up your mind to own this little baggage?”

“No; none of us,” they laughed; but one man, Gilchrist by name, said, with a sneer, he should rather think not, and added two unnecessary words—“workhouse brat!”

Bootles turned, and looked down upon him in profoundest contempt.

“My dear chap,” he said, coolly, “to charge you with being the father of that child,” pointing with his whip to the picture in Lacy’s arms, “would be a compliment on your personal appearance which I should never, under any circumstances, have dreamed of paying you.”

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Hartog afterwards to Lacy, “Bootles is a dashed good fellow—one of the best fellows in the world. I don’t know that there’s another I’d trust as far or as thoroughly; but all the same, Bootles is sometimes best left alone, and, for my part, I think Gilchrist and every one else had best leave him alone about this youngster.”

“Ya—as,” returned Lacy; then began to laugh. “Oh! but it was fine, though, about ‘personal appearance.’” And then he added, “Ugly little beast!”

CHAPTER IV.

It was not to be expected, and Bootles did not expect it, that the story of the mysterious little stranger could be confined to barracks. In fact, in the course of a few hours it had flown all over the town, gaining additions and alterations by the frequency of its repetition, until at last Bootles himself could hardly recognize it. A baby had been found in Captain Ferrers’s rooms; no one knew where it had come from nor to whom it belonged. Then—Captain Ferrers had rescued a young baby from a brutal father who was going to dash its brains out against the door-post. Then—Captain Ferrers had picked up a new-born infant while hunting with the duke’s hounds. Then—Captain Ferrers was suffering from mental aberration, or, to speak plainly, was getting a bit cracked, and had adopted a child a year old out of Idleminster workhouse. Then—It was really most romantic, but Captain Ferrers had been engaged to and jilted by a young lady long ago—which, of course, accounted for his being impervious to the fascinations of the Idleminster girls—who had married, been deserted by her husband, and now died—some versions of the story said “committed suicide”—leaving him the charge of a baby, etc.

Some people told one version of the story and some people told another, but nobody blamed Bootles very much. It might be because he was so rich and so handsome and pleasant; it might be because Idleminster society was free from that leaven of censoriousness which causes most people to look at most things from the worst possible view.

But Bootles went on his serene way, telling the true state of the case to every one who mentioned the affair to him, and always ending, “And hang it, you know, it’s a pretty little beggar, and I couldn’t send it to the workhouse.”

He made no secret about it at all, and on the Saturday following the advent of the child an advertisement appeared in the Idleminster Chronicle which made Idleminster tongues clack for a week:

“Wanted, immediately, a highly respectable and thoroughly experienced nurse of middle age, to take the entire charge of a child about a year old. Good wages to a suitable person. Apply to Captain Ferrers, Scarlet Lancers.”

In due time this advertisement produced the right sort of person, and a staid and respectable widow of about fifty was soon installed in a room next to Mr. Gray’s quarters, in charge of Miss Mignon, as the child had already come to be called by everybody.

It was a charming child—strong and healthy, seemed to have no trouble with temper or teeth, hardly ever cried, and might be seen morning and afternoon being wheeled by its nurse in a baby-carriage about the barrack square or along the road outside the Broad Arrow boundaries. And so, as the weeks rolled by and wore into months, it began to toddle about, and could say “Bootles” as plain as a pike-staff.

In April the Scarlet Lancers were moved from Idleminster to Blankhampton, where Bootles had to undergo a new experience, for every one there took him for a widower on account of the child.

Bootles would explain. “Take her about with me? Yes; she likes it. Always wants to go when she sees the trap. A bother? Not a bit of it; the jolliest little woman in creation, and as good as gold. What am I going to do with her when she grows up? Well, Lacy says he is going to marry her. If he don’t, somebody else will—no fear.”

Taking it all round, Miss Mignon had a remarkably good time of it, and seemed thoroughly to appreciate the pleasant places in which her lines had fallen. It was wonderful, too, what an immense favorite she was with “the fellows.” At first she had been “Bootles’s brat,” but very soon that was dropped, and by the time she could toddle, which she did in very good time, no one thought of mentioning her or of speaking to her except as “Miss Mignon.” Scarcely any of the officers dreamed for a moment of returning after a few days’ leave without “taking along,” as the Americans say, a box of sweets or a bundle of toys for Miss Mignon. Indeed the young lady came to have such a collection that after a while Mrs. Nurse’s patient soul arose, and with Captain Ferrers’s permission all the discarded ones were distributed among the less fortunate children of the regiment.

But Miss Mignon’s favorite plaything was Bootles himself—after Bootles, Lacy. People said it was wonderful, the depth of the affection between the big soldier of thirty-five and the little dot of a child, scarcely two. Bootles she adored, and where Bootles was she would be, if by hook or by crook she could convey her small person into his presence. Once she spied him turn in at the gates on the right hand of the colonel, when the regiment was returning from a field-day, and escaping from her nurse’s hand, set off as hard as she could run in the direction of the band, which immediately preceded the commanding officer. Mrs. Nurse gave chase, but alas! Mrs. Nurse was stout, and had the ill luck, moreover, to come a cropper over a drain tile lying conveniently in her way, while the child, unconscious of danger, ran straight for Bootles. Neither Bootles nor Lacy, who was on the colonel’s left, perceived her until she was close upon them, waving her small hands, and shouting, in her shrill and joyous child’s voice, “Bootles! Bootles!”

It seemed to Bootles, as be looked past the colonel, that the child was almost under the hoofs of Lacy’s charger. “Lacy!” he called out—“Lacy!” But Lacy was already on the ground, and caught Miss Mignon out of harm’s way; but when he turned round he saw that his friend’s face was as white as chalk.

But Lacy was already on the ground, and caught Miss Mignon out of harm’s way

As for the colonel, when he saw Mrs. Nurse gathering herself up with rueful looks at the drain tile, he simply roared, and Miss Mignon chimed in as if it were the finest joke in the world.

“That was a smash,” she remarked, from her proud position on Lacy’s shoulder, “just like Humpty Dumpty”—a comment which gave that estimable person the name of Mrs. Humpty Dumpty as long as she remained with the regiment.

A few weeks after this the annual inspection came off, and Miss Mignon, resenting the lengthened absence of her Bootles, again managed to escape from her nurse, and pattered boldly, as fast as her small feet would carry her, right into the mess-room, where Bootles was sitting, just opposite the general, at the late lunch. Miss Mignon not seeing him at first, wandered coolly behind the row of scarlet-clad backs, until she spied him at the other side of the table. Then, having no awe whatever of inspecting officers, she wedged herself in between his chair and the colonel’s with a triumphant and joyous laugh.

The general gave a great start, and the colonel laughed. Bootles, in dismay, jumped up, and came quickly round the table to take her away.

“Well, you little rogue,” said the colonel, reaching a nectarine for her. “What do you want?”

“I wanted Bootles, sir,” said Miss Mignon, confidentially. “And nurse falled asleep, so I tooked French leave.” Almost the only peculiarity in her speech was the habit of making all verbs regular.

“And who are you, my little maid?” the general asked, in extreme amusement.

“Oh, I’m Miss Mignon,” with dignity.

The old general fairly chuckled with delight, and as he had put his arm round the child, Bootles, who was standing behind, could not very well take her away.

“Oh, Miss Mignon—hey? And whom do you belong to?”

“Why, to Bootles,” in surprise at his ignorance.

“To Bootles? And who is Bootles?”

“Bootles is Bootles, and I love him,” Miss Mignon replied, as if that settled everything.

“Happy Bootles!” cried the old soldier.

“What a lot of medals you’ve got!” cried Miss Mignon, pressing closer.

“I’m afraid, sir, she is troubling you,” Bootles interposed at this point, but secretly delighted with the turn affairs had taken.

“What a lot of medals you’ve got!”

“No, no; let her see my medals,” replied the general, who was as proud of his medals as Bootles of Miss Mignon.

“Are you a ‘sir’ too?” Miss Mignon asked, gazing at the handsome old man with more respect.