n ahead and parleyed with Kit; and while they talked I held
aloft the little pin so that Kit might see the price.

She hesitated so long that I feared she'd slip through my hands, but a
sudden rival voice piping out, "I'll show ye the house, Missus," was
too much for her.

So, with Kit at a safe distance in advance to guard against treachery,
and a large and enthusiastic following, I crossed the street, turned a
corner, walked down one block and half up another, and halted before a
three-story brownstone.

I flew up the stairs, leaving my escort behind, and rang the bell. It
wasn't so terribly swagger a place, which relieved me some.

"I want to see the lady whose baby was lost this morning," I said to
the maid that opened the door.

"Yes'm. Who'll I tell her?"

Who? That stumped me. Not Nance Olden, late of the Vaudeville, later
of the Van Twiller, and latest of the police station. No--not Nance
Olden ... not ...

"Tell her, please," I said firmly, "that I'm Miss Murieson, of the
X-Ray, and that the city editor has sent me here to see her."

That did it. Hooray for the power of the press! She showed me into a
long parlor, and I sat down and waited.

It was cool and quiet and softly pretty in that long parlor. The
shades were down, the piano was open, the chairs were low and softly
cushioned. I leaned back and closed my eyes, exhausted.

And suddenly--Mag!--I felt something that was a cross between a
rose-leaf and a snowflake touch my hand.

If it wasn't that delectable baby!

I caught her and lifted her to my lap and hugged the chuckling thing as
though that was what I came for. Then, in a moment, I remembered the
paper and lifted her little white slip.

It was gone, Mag. The under-petticoat hadn't a sign of the paper I'd
pinned to it.

My head whirled in that minute. I suppose I was faint with the heat,
with hunger and fatigue and worry, but I felt myself slipping out of
things when I heard the rustling of skirts, and there before me stood
the mother of my baby.

The little wretch! She deserted me and flew to that pretty mother of
hers in her long, cool white trailing things, and sat in her arms and
mocked at me.

It was easy enough to begin talking. I told her a tale about being a
newspaper woman out on a story; how I'd run across the baby and all the
rest of it.

"I must ask your pardon," I finished up, "for disturbing you, but two
things sent me here--one to know if the baby got