"I know it," Betty said, unexpectedly reasonable, "but as it happens I"m not. Collier Pratt really is up-stairs with a poor little orphan in tow. Ask any one of the girls."
At this moment Dolly, her ribbons awry and her china-blue eyes widened with excitement, appeared with a dramatic confirmation of Betty"s astonishing announcement.
"There"s a little girl took sick from the peaches, and moved up-stairs in the room next to Gaspard"s," she cried breathlessly. "The doctor that was sitting at the next table, had her moved right up there. He wants to see the lady that runs the restaurant, and he wants a lot of hot water in a pitcher, and some baking soda."
"You see," Betty said, "go on up, I"ll take your place here. Dolly, get the things the doctor asked for."
Nancy stripped off her cap and her ap.r.o.n and resigned her spoons and ladles to Betty without a word. She was still incredulous of what she would find at the top of the three flights of creaking age-worn stairs that separated her from the nest of rooms that were the storm quarters of her hostelry, now converted by a sudden malevolence on the part of fate into a temporary hospital. As she took the last flight she could hear Gaspard"s stertorous breathing coming at the regular intervals of distressful slumber, and through that an ominous murmur of grave and low-voiced conference, such as one hears in the chambers of the dead.
The convulsive application of a powder puff to the tip of her burning nose--her whole face was aflame with exertion and excitement--was merely a part of her whole subconscious effort to get herself in hand for the exigency. Her mind, itself, refused any preparation for the scene that awaited her.
On one of the cushioned benches against the wall in the most decorative of the dining-rooms of the up-stairs suite, a little girl was lying stark against the brilliant blue of the upholstery. She was a child of some seven or eight, lightly built and delicate of features and dressed all in black. Her eyes were closed, but the long lashes emphasizing the shadows in which they were set, prepared you for the revelation of them. Nancy understood that they were Collier Pratt"s eyes, and that they would open presently, and look wonderingly up at her. She recognized the presence of Dr. Sunderland, of Michael and several of the waitresses, and a flighty woman in blue taffeta--an ubiquitous patron,--but she made her way past them at once, and sank on her knees before the prostrate child.
"It"s nothing very serious, Miss Martin," the young surgeon rea.s.sured her, "delicate children of this type are likely to have these seizures. It"s not exactly a fainting fit. It belongs rather to the family of hysteria."
"Wasn"t it the peaches?" Nancy asked fearfully. "They--they had a little brandy in them."
"They may have been a contributing cause," Dr. Sunderland acknowledged, "but the child"s condition is primarily responsible. Let her alone until she rouses,--then give her hot water with a pinch of soda in it at fifteen-minute intervals. Keep her feet hot and her head cold and don"t try to move her until after dark, when it"s cooler."
"All right," Nancy said, "I"ll take care of her."
"Here comes her poor father, now," the lady in taffeta announced with the dramatic commiseration of the self-invited auditor. "He thought an iced towel on her head might make her feel better. Is the dear little thing an orphan--I mean a half orphan?"
The a.s.sembled company seeming disinclined to respond, she repeated her inquiry to Collier Pratt himself, as with the susceptive grace that characterized all his movements, he swung the compress he was carrying sharply to and fro to preserve its temperature in transit. "Is the poor little thing a half orphan?"
"The poor little thing is nine-tenths orphan, madam," said Collier Pratt, "that is--the only creature to whom she can turn for protection is the apology for a parent that you see before you. Would you mind stepping aside and giving me a little more room to work in?"
"Not at all." Irony was wasted on the indomitable sympathizer in blue.
"Hasn"t she really anybody but you to take care of her?"
Collier Pratt arranged the towel precisely in position over the little girl"s forehead, smoothing with careful fingers the cloud of dusky hair that fell about her face.
"She has not," he answered with some savagery.
"Hasn"t she any women friends or relatives that would be willing to take charge of her?"
"No, madam."
"Then some woman that has no child of her own to care for ought to adopt her, and relieve you of the responsibility. It"s a shame and disgrace the way these New York women with no natural ties of their own go around crying for something to do, when there are sweet little children like this suffering for a mother"s care. I"d adopt her myself if I was able to. I certainly would."
"I"m perfectly willing to give over the technical part of her bringing up to some one of the women whom you so feelingly describe," Collier Pratt said. "The trouble is to find the woman--the right woman. The vicarious mother is not the most prevalent of our modern types, I regret to say."
The little girl on the couch stirred softly, and the hand that Nancy was holding, a pathetic, thin, unkempt little hand, grew warm in hers.
The lids of the big eyes fluttered and lifted. Nancy looked into their clouded depths for an instant. Then she turned to Collier Pratt decisively.
"I"ll take care of your little girl for you, if you will let me," she said.
CHAPTER IX
SHEILA
"I had _mal de mer_ when I was on the steamer," the child said, in her pretty, painstaking English--she spoke French habitually. "I do not like to have it on the land. The gentleman in there," she pointed to the room beyond where Gaspard was again distressfully sleeping the sleep of the spent after a period of the most profound physical agitation, "he does not like to have it, too,--I mean either."
Nancy had propped the little girl up on improvised pillows made of coats and wraps swathed in towels and covered her with some strips of canton flannel designed to use as "hushers" under the table covers. As soon as the intense discomfort and nausea that had followed the first period of faintness had pa.s.sed, Nancy had slipped off the shabby satin dress, made like the long-sleeved kitchen ap.r.o.n of New England extraction, and attired the child in a craftily simulated night-gown of table linen. Collier Pratt had worked with her, deftly supplementing all her efforts for his little girl"s comfort until she had fallen into the exhausted sleep from which she was only now rousing and beginning to chatter. Her father had left her, still sleeping soundly, in Nancy"s care, and gone off to keep an appointment with a prospective picture buyer. He had made no comment on Nancy"s sudden impulsive offer to take the child in charge, and neither she nor he had referred to the matter again.
"Are you comfortable now, Sheila?" Nancy asked. She had expected the child to have a French name, Suzanne or j.a.ponette or something equally picturesque, but she realized as soon as she heard it that Sheila was much more suitable. The cloudy blue-black hair, and steel-blue eyes, the slight elongation of the s.p.a.ce between the upper lip and nose, the dazzling satin whiteness of the skin were all Irish in their suggestion. Was the child"s mother--that other natural protector of the child, who had died or deserted her--Nancy tried not to wonder too much which it was that she had done,--an Irish girl, or was Collier Pratt himself of that romantic origin?
"_Oui_, Mademoiselle, I mean, yes, thank you. I do not think I will say to you Miss Martin. We only say their names like that to the people with whom we are not _intime_. We are _intime_ now, aren"t we, now that I have been so very sick _chez vous_? In Paris the _concierge_ had a daughter that I called Mademoiselle Cherie, and we were _very intime_. I think I would like to call you Miss Dear in English after her."
"I should like that very much," Nancy said.
"I am glad the sick gentleman is called Gaspard. So many _messieurs_--I mean gentlemen in Paris are called Gaspard, and hardly any in the United States of America. American things are very different from things in Paris, don"t you think so, Miss Dear?"
"I"m afraid they are," Nancy acquiesced gravely.
"I"m afraid they are too," the child said, "but afraid is what I try not to be of them. My father says America is full of beasts and devils, but he does not mind because he can paint them."
"Do you live in a studio?" Nancy asked after a struggle to prevent herself from asking the question. She felt that she had no right to any of the facts about Collier Pratt"s existence that he did not choose to volunteer for himself.
"Yes, Miss Dear, but not like Paris. There we had a door that opened into a garden, and the birds sang there, and I was allowed to go and play. Here we have only a fire-escape, and the _concierge_ is only a janitor and will not allow us to keep milk bottles on it. I do not like a janitor. _Concierges_ have so much more _politesse_. Now, no one takes care of me when father goes out, or brings me soup or _gateaux_ when he forgets."
"Does he forget?" Nancy cried, horrified.
"Sometimes. He forgets himself, too, very often except dinner. He remembers that because he likes to come to this Outside Inn restaurant, where the cooking is so good. He brought me here to-day because it was my birthday. I think the cooking is very good except that I was so sick of eating it, but father swore to-day that it was not."
"Swore?"
"He said d.a.m.n. That is not very bad swearing. I think _nom de Dieu_ is worse, don"t you, Miss Dear?"
"I"m going to take you up in my arms," said Nancy with sudden pa.s.sion.
"I want to feel how thin you are, and I want to feel how you--feel."
"Why, your eyes are wetting," the little girl exclaimed as she nestled contentedly against Nancy"s breast, where Nancy had gathered her, converted table-cloth and all.
"It"s your not having enough to eat," Nancy cried. "Oh! baby child, honey. How could they? It"s your calling me Miss Dear, too," she said.
"I--I can"t stand the combination."
The child patted her cheek consolingly.
"Don"t cry," she said; "my father cries because I get so hungry, when he forgets, but he does forget again as soon."
"Would you like to come and live with me, Sheila?" Nancy asked.
"I think so, Miss Dear."
"Then you shall," Nancy said devoutly.