s
sick, dying, you didn't want him. You did not like to look at him because
he was ugly; you did not like to hear him cry--so you abused him. Now,
he's all well; he's a pretty baby; he does not cry; he does not scratch. I
never shake him; he loves me very, very much. Now I keep him!" Thus Sheila
delivered her ultimatum.

But the senora still clung. "I no shake babee now. I love babee now.
Please--please--his pa-pa come. You give heem back?"

Sheila unclasped the senora's hands, turned the atom's carriage about, and
deliberately wheeled him away.

Out of the lobby to the sidewalk she was pursued by pleading cries,
expostulating reproofs, as well as actual particles of the crowd itself,
the Reverend Mr. Grumble, the wife of one of the trustees, a handful of
protesting patients, following to urge the rights of the prostrated
mother. But Sheila refused to be held back or argued with; stoically she
kept on her way. When she reached the little vine-covered porch only
Peter, Father O'Friel, and Doctor Fuller remained as escort.

"You can't keep him, Leerie. You've got to give him up." The old doctor
spoke sorrowfully but firmly.

"It was only a mock adoption, and you promised if she ever wanted him back
she should have him," Father O'Friel reminded her.

"She's his mother, after all," Peter put in, lamely.

At that Sheila exploded. "You men make me tired! 'She's his mother, after
all.' After all what? Cruelty, neglect, heartlessness, hoping he would
die--glad to be rid of him! That's about all the sense of justice you
have. Let a woman weep and call for her baby, and every man within earshot
would hand him over without considering for a moment what kind of care she
would give him. Oh, you--make--me--sick!" Sheila buried her face in the
nape of Pancho's neck.

Doctor Fuller, who had always known her, who had stood by her in her
disgrace when she had been sent away from the sanitarium three years
before and had believed in her implicitly in spite of all damning
evidence, who had fought for her a dozen times when she had called down
upon her head the wrath of the business office, looked now upon her
silent, shaking figure with open-mouthed astonishment. In all those years
he had never seen Leerie cry, and he couldn't quite stand it.

"There, there, child! We understand--we're not quite the duffers you make
us out. Of course, by all rights, human and moral, the little shaver
belongs to you, but you can't keep him, just t