NAN WHISPERS IN SCHOOL
“Well, Richard, what do you think of the latest member of the family?”
asked Mrs. Bobbsey.
“She’s a dear, sweet little thing, but—”
Mr. Bobbsey did not finish what he started to say. He and his wife were
bending over and looking at the sleeping baby—May Washington, as she
had been hastily named. The Bobbsey twins had gone to school and the
house was quiet—just the place for a sleeping baby.
“I can’t understand how any mother would leave such a little, helpless
baby like this out in a storm all night,” went on Mr. Bobbsey, as he
prepared to go down to his lumberyard.
“Perhaps it wasn’t the mother,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Certainly that woman
seemed too old to be the mother of a little baby like this.”
“I don’t believe she was the mother,” declared Mr. Bobbsey, looking for
his hat.
“Do you think she was the kidnapper?”
“I don’t know what to think. I’ll have another talk with the police
to-day. You can’t do very much over the telephone, but I wanted to
satisfy the children a little. Yes, I’ll inquire further.”
“And what will we do with her—with Baby May, I mean—if the police
can’t find out to whom she belongs?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.
“Well—” Mr. Bobbsey turned his hat around several times and looked
inside it as if, there, he might find an answer to the puzzling riddle.
“Well?” asked his wife, with a smile, as she waited.
“Um! Well, if we can’t find out where she belongs, I suppose the police
will have to take her, and—”
“The police!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, and then she clapped her hand over
her mouth, for she had, in her excitement, spoken so loudly that she was
afraid of waking the infant. “Why, Richard Bobbsey!” she went on in a
whisper, “you wouldn’t turn a helpless little baby like May over to a
lot of men police, would you?”
“Well, of course I didn’t mean exactly that,” he murmured. “But we can’t
keep her—she belongs to some one else—and the police will know what to
do with her. You always give abandoned babies to the police.”
“Oh, do you?” asked his wife, with a smile. “Well, this is the first
time I ever saw or had an abandoned baby, so I don’t know. And what do
the police do with the babies?” she asked. “Lock them in an iron cell?”
“Of course not!” exclaimed Mr. Bobbsey. “They send them to a nursing
home, a foundling asylum, an orphanage—or somewhere. I don’t know
exactly myself; but the police know what to do.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” agreed his wife, with a smile. “But it seems hard
to turn a sweet little baby like this over to a lot of men, even if they
are kind, to have them take her to an orphan asylum.”
“Oh, they have police women, or matrons, or something like that to look
after kidnapped babies,” said Mr. Bobbsey.
“Richard Bobbsey,” his wife whispered, as she followed him to the front
door, “I don’t believe there’s a single police woman, or matron, in
Lakeport!”
“Well, they’ll have to get one then. Anyhow, we can’t keep the baby. She
will have to go to some asylum.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” and Mrs. Bobbsey sighed. “It seems strange that she
should be left with us, when there are good neighbors on either side of
us.”
“Neighbors without children—yes,” laughed Mr. Bobbsey. “That old woman
with the green umbrella knew what she was about when she left her basket
here. She saw our twins at the window and she knew we were the kind to
look after a baby. But, as you say, we can’t keep her, of course.”
“No, I suppose not,” and Mrs. Bobbsey went back to look at the sleeping
baby while her husband hurried on to his lumber office. “Poor, lonely
little dear!” she murmured, bending over Baby May. “I wonder who your
mother is!”
Big, fat, jolly, black Dinah tiptoed in.
“Am de honey lamb sleepin’?” she whispered. “Does she want any mo’ hot
milk?”
“Not yet, Dinah,” Mrs. Bobbsey said. “But you might have some ready for
her when she awakens. And bake a potato for her, Dinah. She’s too old to
live entirely on milk. She must be about a year old, I should say.”
“Ain’t she sweet!” whispered Dinah, touching gently with her fat black
finger the rosepetal cheek of sleeping May. “Ah jes’ lubs dat honey
lamb!”
“I should think any one would love her,” returned Mrs. Bobbsey, fondly.
“Yo’ t’inks she am about a yeah old? She suttenly am very small.”
“I should say about a year, Dinah. But, of course, I am not at all sure.
Babies are sometimes deceiving when it comes to age. Some grow much
faster than others.”
“Don’t see how nobody could go off an leab dat chile alone on de
doahstep,” muttered the colored cook, as she waddled back to the
kitchen.
Mr. Bobbsey reached his office, and finding that the storm had not done
as much damage to his lumberyard as he had feared, went to the police to
learn more, if he could, about the abandoned baby. He talked first with
the officer at the railroad station.
“What train did the old lady with the basket come in on?” the father of
the Bobbsey twins asked.
“That I couldn’t say,” answered Jim Tully, the policeman at the station.
“Two trains got in at the same time, and I don’t know which one she got
off from. I could ask the conductors, though.”
“I wish you would,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “I’d like to get this baby back to
her father and mother. They must be wild about losing her.”
“I should say so!” agreed Mr. Tully. “I’ve got six of my own, and I know
my wife and I’d be crazy if one of ’em was missing over night. I’ll see
what I can find out for you.”
“And if you can’t find out anything,” went on Mr. Bobbsey, “what are we
to do with this baby?”
“Hum!” mused Mr. Tully. “That I don’t know. I’ll have to ask the chief.
You don’t want to keep it, I s’pose?” he asked.
“Why—er—I don’t know. We hardly thought of that,” said Mr. Bobbsey.
“No, of course not. Being a strange baby, your wife wouldn’t want to be
bothered. Well, I’ll see what I can find out for you. But I took
particular notice of the old lady. I saw the basket was big and pretty
heavy for her, and I offered to help her carry it to the waiting room
after she got off the train. But she wouldn’t let me—she drew away.”
“She was afraid you’d find out there was a baby in the basket, I
suppose,” suggested Mr. Bobbsey.
“I reckon so,” agreed the officer. “I’ll see the chief and ask what
you’d better do with the child if we can’t locate the old lady. You say
she passed your house?”
“Yes, twice, my wife said. I’ll go down and see the chief myself. I’ve
got to do something about the baby.”
Mr. Bobbsey had his talk with the chief of the Lakeport police.
Meanwhile, because of Mr. Bobbsey’s earlier telephone message, inquiries
had been made of other officers, and a search started for the strange
old woman, but she could not be found.
“You see, Mr. Bobbsey,” said Chief Gallagher at the town hall, “we
haven’t any matron or police woman here, and if you turn the baby over
to us I’ll have to send to Hilldale for a woman to look after her. They
have a matron at Hilldale.”
“Well, we can keep the baby for a day or so,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “My wife
seems rather fond of her. I guess I’d better put an advertisement in the
papers—what do you think?”
“I would,” agreed the chief. “That’s right—advertise for the baby’s
father and mother. And I’ll be on the lookout for any news. If the child
was stolen away from some other city we’ll hear about it. There’ll be a
piece in the papers. You just wait a few days.”
The Bobbsey twins, talking of the big storm and the new baby, reached
school. Before entering the yard where the other children were at play,
Bert said:
“Now, Flossie and Freddie, don’t say anything about the baby.”
“Why not?” Flossie asked. “I was going to tell Mary Holmes. She’s got a
baby at her house an’ she’s always saying we haven’t any. Now I can tell
her we _have_!”
“No, don’t say anything about it,” warned Bert. “Mother and daddy might
not like it. Wait until we find out who the baby belongs to. Now mind,
Flossie and Freddie, don’t tell any of your friends about the baby.”
“Oh, all right,” agreed Flossie, for her mother had told her she must do
as Bert said while at school.
“I don’t care about a girl baby,” murmured Freddie. “If she was a boy,
so I could have a brother littler’n what I am, I’d like it all right.”
“Well, don’t say anything,” warned Bert. He turned to say the same thing
to Nan, but she had walked on ahead to talk with some of her girl chums,
and Bert did not bother to follow. “I guess Nan won’t say anything,
anyhow,” he thought.
But he little knew Nan Bobbsey. She was just bursting with the news and
longing to whisper it to her best chum, Nellie Parks, who sat with her.
But the Bobbsey twins had been delayed a little that morning, because of
finding the baby, and the last bell rang as they reached the school
yard. So Nan had to hurry into her classroom without a chance to tell
Nellie the news.
The morning exercises were held. The children sang a hymn and then took
part in the beautiful ceremony of saluting the flag. Then the different
classes, including the one Flossie and Freddie were in, marched from the
assembly room and the day’s lessons began.
It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, after the cold April rain—a
perfect May day, so Nan thought, as she looked from the schoolroom
window.
And this—thinking of a May day—made her remember the little baby at
home.
Hardly aware of what she was doing, Nan turned to Nellie and whispered:
“Oh, I’ve got the greatest news for you! You’ll never guess what we have
at our house!”
“A new piano!” guessed Nellie, in a whisper.
“No! It’s a _baby_!” and Nan whispered so shrilly that the teacher heard
her and looked up in surprise.
“Nan Bobbsey! were you whispering?” asked Miss Riker.
“Ye—yes—yes’m—I—I was!” faltered Nan, realizing, too late, what she
had done.
“What were you saying?” Miss Riker asked, not unkindly. “Was it about
the lesson, Nan?”
“No’m. It was about—about the new baby at our house!”
“Oh, a new baby! That’s lovely!” and Miss Riker smiled. “But you
shouldn’t whisper about it in school, Nan. When did the baby come?”
“Last night—in the rain. It was left on our doorstep in a basket—and I
heard it cry. I thought it was a kitten—and it was a baby!”
There was a gasp of surprise from all the pupils in the room.
“Nan Bobbsey!” exclaimed Miss Riker, rather sternly, “are you making up
a fairy story?”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Nan. “It’s all true!” And she was allowed to tell
the class what had happened. It was so unusual that Miss Riker forgot
all about lessons, for which the boys and girls were very glad. And so
the story of the abandoned baby was known all over the school at recess.