"How can I be yer next o' kin if I don't bring ye' up, a young boy like
you? Be sensible, Kiddy. Yer ch'ice is between me and the State, and
I'd be a lot better nor that, wouldn't I? The State won't be talkin' o'
sendin' yer to college, mind that now."
There was no controverting the fact. As a State ward, he would not go
to college, and to college he meant to go. If he could not go by one
means he must go by another. Since Honey would prove a means of some
sort, he might be obliged to depend on him.
The bus was bowling and lurching up the slope by which Fifth Avenue
borders the Park, when Honey rose, clinging to the backs of the
neighboring seats. "We'll git out at the next corner."
Having reached the ground, he led the way across the street, scanning
the houses opposite.
"There it is," he said, with choked excitement, when he had found the
façade he was looking for. "That big brown front, with the high steps,
and the swell bow-winders. That's where the Whitelaw baby used to live."
Face to face with the spot, Tom felt a flickering of interest. He
listened with attention while Honey explained how the baby carriage
had for the last time been lifted down by two footmen, and how it was
wheeled away by the nurse.
"Nash, her name was. I seen her come out one day, when Goody and me was
standin' 'ere. Nice little thing she seemed, English, same as I be.
Yes, Goody and me'd sniggle and snaggle ourselves every which way to
see how we could cook up a yarn that'd ketch on to some o' that money.
We sure did read the papers them days! There wasn't nothink about the
Whitelaw baby what we didn't know. Now, if yer've looked long enough at
the 'ouse, Kid, I'll show yer somethink else."
They went into the Park by the same little opening through which
the Whitelaw baby had passed, not to return. Like a detective
reconstructing the action of a crime, he followed the path Miss Nash
had taken, almost finding the marks of the wheels in the gravel.
Going round the shoulder of a little hill, they came to a fan-shaped
elm, in the shade of which there was a seat. Beyond the seat was a
clump of lilac, so grouped as to have a hollow like a horseshoe in
its heart, with a second seat close by. Honey revived the scene as if
he had witnessed it. Miss Nash had sat here; her baby carriage had
stood there. The other nurse, name o' Miss Messenger, had put her baby
beneath the elm, and taken her seat where she could watch it. All he
was obliged to leave out was the actual exchange of the image for the
baby, which remained a mystery.
"This 'ere laylock bush ain't the same what was growin' 'ere then. That
one was picked down, branch by branch, and carried off for tokens. Had
a sprig of it meself at one time. I always thinks them little memoriums
is instructive. I recolleck there was a man 'anged in Liverpool, and
the 'angman, a friend of my guv'nor's, give me a bit of the chap's
shirt, what he'd left in his cell when he changed to a clean one to be
'anged in. Well, I kep' that bit o' shirt for years. Always reminded me
not to murder no one. Wish I had it now. Funny it'd be, wouldn't it, if
you turned out to be the Whitelaw baby? He'd a' been just about your
age."
Tom threw himself sprawling on the seat where Miss Nash had read
_Juliet Allingham's Sin_, and laughed lazily. "I couldn't be, because
his name was Harry, and mine's Tom."
"Oh, a little thing like that wouldn't invidiate your claim."
"But I haven't got a claim. You don't suppose my mother stole me, do
you? That's the very thing she used to tell me not to...."
The laugh died on his lips. As Honey stood looking down at him there
was a light in his blue-gray eye like the striking of a match. Tom
knew that the same thought was in both their minds. Why should a woman
have uttered such a warning if she had not been afraid of a suspicion?
A flush that not only reddened his tanned cheeks, but mounted to the
roots of his bushy, horizontal eyebrows, made him angry with himself.
He sprang to his feet.
"Look here, Honey! Aren't there animals in this Park? Let's go and find
them."
To his relief, Honey pressed no question as to his mother and stolen
babies as they went off to the Zoo.