t somethin' worster, with
fish's faces, maybe. How will you like that? You can't never tell what
kind they're goin' to be, an' you've _got_ to keep 'em."

This haphazard system--or the lack of it--rather alarmed Esther, though
the desire for a baby of her own design and choosing was growing
stronger every day. For her loneliness was growing, too. Jacob was
hardly ever at home. He spent many of his days and all of his evenings
in his fruitless, endless search. And Mrs. Moriarty had begun to help
him through some subterranean first-cousin-twice-removed channel which
connected her with a member of the police force. She was making a
canvass of the women's lodging-houses near the Bowery.

So Esther, having much time upon her hands, turned her thoughts again to
the upbringing of a brother, and wrote again to the headquarters in
Central Park, and impressed upon the authorities--in large round writing
upon a sheet of pink paper with two turtle doves embossed upon it--that
she was not in a hurry for her baby, and would prefer to wait until they
found a really acceptable article. If possible, she would prefer
from-gold hair, blue eyes, and a silent tongue. For such an infant her
outgrown crib, a warm welcome, and comfortable home were waiting. No
others need apply.

When this letter was despatched she felt greatly relieved, and set about
the nursing of the lady mit the from-gold hair with renewed energy. And
the lady needed her little friend and welcomed her always with a gentle
smile, though a large and unwonted female was now regularly established
in the room, from which she relentlessly barred more disturbing and
autobiographical visitors.

All through her illness, indeed ever since her first coming into that
house, she had kept the door open, and she lay so that she could watch
the stairs. Whom she was waiting for she never told, but she was always
listening. She knew the step of every fellow lodger, of the doctor, of
any one who had ever once climbed those stairs. And at the approach of
any new footstep she would sit up rigidly among her pillows, staring and
listening so intently that when the new-comer appeared and brought
disappointment, she would sink back gasping and exhausted.

"What does she says?" Esther once asked the imposing nurse, when a
visitor for the Top Floor Front had precipitated one of these attacks.
"What does she says when she cries?"

"She says," interpreted the nurse, "'He is dead. It must be that