CHAPTER IX.A PROMISING ADVERTISEMENT.
With no little diffidence did Miss Prudence Semaphore, a woman quite unused to the ways and wants of babies, present herself at the special counter in Whiteley’s devoted to their needs, and falter out that she required a complete outfit for an infant. The attendant who waited on her considered that she had a most extraordinary customer to deal with, for the lady neither knew the age of the child nor the names and quantities of the needful garments, and when she finally took everything that was suggested to her, she required instruction as to how and in what order the various articles were to be put on. Having requested that a parcel of the most indispensable objects should be given to her, and that the remainder should be delivered that afternoon at 37, Beaconsfield Gardens,the next step for Miss Prudence was to find a nurse who would undertake the care of Augusta. This at once landed her in difficulties. She first thought of appealing to the shop-woman, but the manner of that superior young person was so lofty that the words died on Miss Semaphore’s lips. The Universal Provider certainly did not provide homes for infants. Prudence dared not ask any of her acquaintances as to a suitable person, yet could not imagine how else she was to get one. She could not seize the first respectable-looking body that passed by and ask her would she mind an infant. Like a woman with a guilty secret she wandered up and down the Grove, looking vaguely into shop windows but seeing nothing, and wondering all the time what she was to do. It seemed almost as desperate an undertaking to get rid of a baby as to get rid of a corpse.
At last the idea struck her that the laundress who washed for herself and her sister might know of someone suitable. Mrs. Robbins lived at Hammersmith, and Miss Prudence, hailing an omnibus going in that direction, got in. If Mrs. Robbins could not help her, what was she to do? As shejourneyed on, however, doubts as to the wisdom of consulting Mrs. Robbins assailed her. She would put herself, to a certain extent, in the woman’s power, and the civilest of laundresses might not be pleasant as aconfidante. Again, Mrs. Robbins might gossip with the servants at Beaconsfield Gardens, and as Miss Semaphore’s one aim was to avoid the tongues of her fellow-boarders, she felt the risk to be too great.
Accordingly, though she had paid her fare to Hammersmith Broadway, she presently signalled to the conductor to set her down.
“We ain’t there yet, mum,” said that functionary. “You sed ’Ammersmith.”
“No matter, no matter,” answered Miss Prudence, “I wish to be set down here.”
The man obeyed, and the lady was left standing on the pathway, considering what she should do next.
Mechanically she turned down a side street, and noticed at the door of a clean-looking house a chubby-faced, bright young woman, nursing a baby. Summoning up all her courage, Miss Semaphore approached her, and with unconscious diplomacy remarked,
“What a very fine child! Is it yours?”
“Yes ’m,” replied the beaming mother. “My third ’e is, just six months old, bless ’is little ’eart; but ’e ain’t looking well now, not ’e, ’e’s teething, and that do so pull a hinfant down.”
“He is a beauty,” said Miss Prudence. “Should you be disposed to undertake the care of another child—a—a little younger, if you were well paid for it?”
“No ’m, that I shouldn’t,” said the young woman promptly. “My own three is enough for me, an’ my old man I know he wouldn’t like it, nohow.”
“Could you recommend any careful, respectable woman who would?”
“I can’t say as I do. Ain’t the child’s parents living, or is it yer own?”
“Oh, no!” said Miss Prudence, blushing to the eyes, “the child is an orphan.”
“Poor little thing. Sorry I carn’t ’elp you, ’m, but I don’t know a suitable party.”
A second application, this to a decent-looking body who was sweeping out a particularly dingy chapel, met with no better success.
A third woman did know of someone whose child had died and who might, perhaps, be willing to care for a baby, but on looking for the street where the person was said tolive, Miss Semaphore found that some mistake had been made in the address, and that no one knew of any such place. The people she asked made various suggestions as to where she should go, and she tried them all without result.
Discouraged by so many failures, tired and weak from want of food, the spirits of our poor Prudence sank to zero.
“What am I to do with her?” she asked, as if calling creation to witness her perplexity “Shall I find no one to take her?”
While in this disturbed frame of mind she walked meditatively onward, and stopped before a little newspaper and tobacco shop, reading the posters displayed outside, without understanding a word. Suddenly, amidst the tumult of her thoughts, she noticed that a pleasant-looking woman was sitting behind the counter reading and knitting. This stranger might help her. She entered, and having selected and paid for aGraphic, and read some remarks on the weather, said as if though an after-thought,
“By the way, do you know of any respectable woman that would take care of a baby?”
“Do you mean a nurse to live indoors,ma’am, or a person to take care of the child at her own home?”
“I mean someone who would take a baby to live with her, and show it every kindness.”
“That’s not so easy to get, ma’am, and I can’t say as I do know anyone I could recommend.” Then, with a sharp glance, “May I arsk if the child is your own?”
“Oh dear, no!” cried Miss Prudence hastily. “It is my sister.”
“Your sister’s—a— And is your sister dead?”
“Dead! of course not. Why should I want a home for her if she were?”
“Beg pardon, ma’am, I didn’t understand you wanted a home for the lady too, I thought as you said only for the baby.”
“Itisonly for the baby,” replied Prudence in confusion. “The baby is my sister.”
“Your sister?” repeated the woman, surprised. “Your sister a baby?”
“Yes,” answered Prudence, rather nettled. “My sister is a baby, there is nothing so wonderful in that I hope.”
The woman looked as if she would like to ask some further questions, but checked herself and said,
“Oh, of course not. It’s none of mybusiness, anyhow—and by the way I’ve just remembered something that might do if I can find it. About six months ago one of my customers arsked me to put up a bill in the window, wishing for to adopt a child, an’ I did, but nothink came of it, and so I took it down after a month or two and put it aside somewhere. If I could find it, it might be somethink like you want.”
“Pray do look for it. I shall be greatly obliged.”
After some rummaging in various drawers and boxes, and calling upstairs to an invisible “’Lizer,” the document, dirty and fly-stained, was found under a heap of old newspapers and handed to Prudence.
It read:—
“A respectable married woman, having no children of her own, would like to adopt or mind a healthy baby. Comfortable home. Care and affection of a mother guaranteed. Premium required. Address, by letter only, X. Y. Z., 42, Plummer’s Cottages, Barker’s Rents, Elm Lane.”
Miss Prudence was enchanted.
“The very thing!” she exclaimed. “‘Comfortable home.’ ‘Care and affection of a mother guaranteed.’ Just what I want.”
She copied the address, thanked the shop-woman profusely, and gave her half-a-crown for her trouble. Lunch hour at Beaconsfield Gardens was long past, so Prudence ate a bun, drank a glass of milk, and thought she had done a good morning’s work.
The chief drawback was that she should now have to keep Augusta concealed for at least another day, instead of being able to smuggle her out of the house that night as she had hoped. It was a risk, but she had no alternative, much as she dreaded the secret in some way getting out. She found Augusta sleeping. A vague hope had sprung up in her breast that on her return she might discover her sister in her normal condition, and be able to look back on the events of the night as a bad dream. She was doomed to disappointment. It was all but too real. Without disturbing the infant, at whom she gazed for a time with mingled pity and aversion, she sat down and wrote at once to X. Y. Z., asking that respectable married woman if she were still willing to undertake the care of a baby, and if she would write, or wire by return, appointing a place of meeting, as there was a little baby girl she would like to entrust to her motherly care.
Though she was unwilling that the child should be permanently adopted, she felt sure that some mutually satisfactory arrangement might be entered into. She wound up, “Pray write or telegraph at once without fail, as the case is urgent, and I will pay you handsomely for your trouble.” This she signed with initials, gave the address of a neighbouring stationer’s, where letters were received at a penny each, and posted it herself.