n: it's to feel
that delicious, helpless clutch of weak fingers; the clutch of
dependence, of trust, of appeal.

I looked down at her with that same silly adoration I've seen on
Molly's face for her poor, lacking, twisted boy. At least, I did in
the beginning. But gradually the expression of my face must have
changed; for all at once I discovered what had been done to me.

My purse was gone.

Yes, Maggie Monahan, clean gone! My pocket had been as neatly picked
as I myself--well, never mind, as what. I threw back my head and
laughed aloud. Nance Olden, the great doer-up, had been done up so
cleverly, so surely, so prettily, that she hadn't had an inkling of it.

I wished I could get a glimpse of the clever girl that did it. A
girl--of course, it was! Do you think any boy's fingers could do a job
like that and me not even know?

But I didn't stop to wish very long. Here was I with the thing I
valued most in the world still clutched in my hand, and not a nickel to
my name to get me, the paper, and the baby on our way.

It was the baby, of course, that decided me. You can't be very
enterprising when you're carrying a pink lump of sweetness that's all
a-smile at the moment, but may get all a-tear the next.

"It's you for the nearest police station, you young tough!" I said,
squeezing her. "I can't take you home now and show you to Mag."

But she giggled and gurgled back at me, the abandoned thing, as though
the police station was just the properest place for a young lady of her
years.

It was not so very near, either, that station. My arm ached when I got
there from carrying her, but my heart ached, too, to leave her. I told
the matron how and where the little thing had picked me up. At first
she wouldn't leave me, but--the fickle little thing--a glass of milk
transferred all her smiles and wiles to the matron. Then we both went
over her clothes to find a name or an initial or a laundry mark. But
we found nothing. The matron offered me a glass of milk, too, but I
was in a hurry to be gone. She was a nice matron; so nice that I was
just about to ask her for the loan of car-fare when--

When I heard a voice, Maggie, in the office adjoining. I knew that
voice all right, and I knew that I had to make a decision quick.

I did. I threw the whole thing into the lap of Fate. And when I
opened the door and faced him I was smiling.

Oh, yes, it was Tausig.

XIV.

He started as though he couldn'