s.

"I go when I see babee," came the feeble response to his racket.

"Let her in, Hennessy," came the voice of Sheila from up-stairs.

Hennessy unbarred the door, and a shaken, pathetic little figure crept in.
All the coy prettiness was gone for the moment; the swollen eyes had
circles about them, the cheeks were sallow and free of powder as the lips
were free of carmine. The mouth quivered like a grief-stricken child's.
"Please--please--I see babee?" came the wail again.

"Yes. Come up softly," Sheila called from the head of the stairs.

The little figure crept up eagerly. Sheila put out an arm and led her into
a room where a single candle burned beside the bed. There lay the atom,
rosy and dimpling in his sleep.

It is to be doubted if the senora had ever dreamed of such a possession
after the appalling reality of the original Francisco Enrique Manuel
Machado y Rodriguez. In her ignorance and youth she had accepted ugliness,
sickness, and peevish crying as the normal attributes of babyhood, and
because of this she had loathed it. Therefore to be suddenly confronted
with her awful mistake, to find that she had thrown away something that
was beautiful and enchanting, to know she had forfeited what might have
been hers, to feel in a small degree the first longing of motherhood and
be denied it--all this was born into the slowly awakening consciousness of
the senora. It almost transformed her face into homely holiness as she
made her one supreme prayer and sacrifice. "You give me my babee--now--you
give heem and not keep--and I give you all these. See?" She held out her
hands that had been clasped under the heavy mantilla that covered her head
and shoulders. Opening them, she thrust them close, that Sheila might
look. They were filled with jewels--the jewels she adored, that had
contributed a large part to the joy of her existence. Pins, rings,
necklaces, bracelets--the senora had not kept back a single ornament.
"You--you and the blessed Maria will give heem back to me?"

"Get down and pray to the Maria," commanded Sheila. "Promise her that if
she will give your baby back to you you will take care of him for ever and
ever. Never neglect him, never shake nor slap him, never give him bad milk
to make him sick. Promise you'll always love him and keep him laughing and
pretty. And remember--break your promise, let anything happen to Pancho
again, and Maria will not give him back to you another time."

The sanitarium n