Ah me, Maggie, the miserable Nance that went away from that station!
To have had your future in your grasp, like that one of the Fates with
the string, and then to have it snatched from you by an impish breeze
and blown away, goodness knows where!
I don't know just which way I turned after I left that station. I
didn't care where I went. Nothing I could think of gave me any
comfort. I tried to fancy myself coming home to you. I tried to see
myself going down to tell the whole thing to Obermuller. But I
couldn't do that. There was only one thing I wanted to say to Fred
Obermuller, and that thing I couldn't say now.
But Nance Olden's not the girl to go round long like a molting hen.
There was only one chance in a hundred, and that was the one I took, of
course.
"Back to the Square where you found the baby, Nance!" I cried to
myself. "There's the chance that that admirable dragon has had her
suspicions aroused by your connection with the baby, which she hadn't
known before, and has already dutifully notified the Sergeant. There's
the chance that the baby is home by now, and the paper found by her
mother will be turned over to her papa; and then it's good-by to your
scheme. There's the chance that--"
But in the heart of me I didn't believe in any chance but one--the
chance that I'd find that blessed baby and get my fingers just once
more on that precious paper.
I blew in the A.D.'s nickel on a cross-town car and got back to the
little Square. There was another organ-grinder there grinding out
coon-songs, to which other piccaninnies danced. But nary a little
white bundle of fluff caught hold of my hand. I walked that Square
till my feet were sore. It was hot. My throat was parched. I was
hungry. My head ached. I was hopeless. And yet I just couldn't give
it up. I had asked so many children and nurse-maids whether they'd
heard of the baby lost that morning and brought back by an officer,
that they began to look at me as though I was not quite right in my
mind. The maids grabbed the children if they started to come near me,
and the children stared at me with big round eyes, as though they'd
been told I was an ogre who might eat them.
I was hungry enough to. The little fruit-stand at the entrance had a
fascination for me. I found myself there time and again, till I got
afraid I might actually try to get of with a peach or a bunch of
grapes. That thought haunted me. Fancy Nance Olden starved and
blundering into the cheapest and most easily detected species of
thieving!
I suppose great generals in their hour of defeat imagine themselves
doing the feeblest, foolishest things. As I sat there on the bench,
gazing before me, I saw the whole thing--Nancy Olden, after all her
bragging, her skirmishing, her hairbreadth scapes and successes,
arrested in broad daylight and before witnesses for having stolen a
cool, wet bunch of grapes, worth a nickel, for her hot, dry, hungering
throat! I saw the policeman that'd do it; he looked like that Sergeant
Mulhill I met 'way, 'way back in Latimer's garden. I saw the officer
that'd receive me; he had blue eyes like the detective that came for me
to the Manhattan. I saw the woman jailer--oh, she was the A.D., all
right, who'd receive me without the slightest emotion, show me to a
cell and lock the door, as calm, as little triumphant or affected, as
though I hadn't once outwitted that cleverest of creatures--and
outwitted myself in forestalling her. I saw--
Mag, guess what I saw! No, truly; what I really saw? It made me jump
to my feet and grab it with a squeal.
I saw my own purse lying on the gravel almost at my feet, near the
little fruit-stand that had tempted me.
Blank empty it was, stripped clean, not a penny left in it, not a
paper, not a stamp, not even my key. Just the same I was glad to have
it. It linked me in a way to the place. The clever little girl that
had stolen it had been here in this park, on this very spot. The
thought of that cute young Nance Olden distracted my mind a minute from
my worry--and, oh, Maggie darlin', I was worrying so!
I walked up to the fruit-stand with the purse in my hand. The old
fellow who kept it looked up with an inviting smile. Lord knows, he
needn't have encouraged me to buy if I'd had a penny.
"I want to ask you," I said, "if you remember selling a lot of good
things to a little girl who had a purse this--this morning?"