CHAPTER III.

AS soon as Bootles had a spare moment he made his way to the adjutant’s quarters, where he found Mrs. Gray playing with the mysterious baby.

“Oh, is that you, Captain Ferrers?” she exclaimed. “Come and see your waif. She is the dearest little thing. Why, I do believe she knows you.”

Bootles whistled to the child, which promptly made a grab at his chain, and when he sat down on the sofa on which it was sprawling, tried very hard to get at the gold badge on his collar. Shoulder badges had not then come in.

“Mrs. Gray,” Bootles said, “she’s very well dressed, is she not?”

“Oh, very,” Mrs. Gray answered, smoothing out the child’s skirt so as to display the fine and deep embroidery. “Unusually so. All its clothes are of the finest and most expensive description.”

“I thought so; it doesn’t look like a common child, eh?”

“Not at all,” replied the lady, promptly.

[Picture: Mignon’s Own–Illustration]

“Well,” Bootles told her, “I’ve been most unmercifully chaffed, which was only to be expected; but the colonel takes my word about it, and of course the others don’t matter. I can’t think, though, why the mother has chosen me.”

“All, well, you see, Captain Ferrers,” said the adjutant’s wife, with a smile, “it is rather inconvenient sometimes to have a character for great kindness of heart. I should say you are the greatest favorite in the regiment, and, naturally enough, the officers speak of it sometimes in society. ‘Oh, Bootles is this, and Bootles is that;’ ‘Bootles wouldn’t turn a dog from his door;’ ‘Bootles would share his last sixpence with a poor chap who was down,’ and so on. _I_ have heard, Captain Ferrers, of your emptying your pockets to divide among three poor tramps who had begged no more than a pipe of tobacco. _I_ have heard of your standing up for”—with a deeper smile—“the poor devils of casuals; and if I hear it, why not others? why not the mother of this child?”

“True. But I think you all overrate my character,” Bootles replied, modestly. “You know I don’t go in for being saintly at all.”

“That is just it. If you did you would have no more influence than Major Allardyce, whom every one laughs at. But you don’t; you are one of themselves, and yet you will always help a man who is down; you will do any unfortunate creature a good turn. Oh, I hear a good deal, though you choose to make light of it. And you know, Captain Ferrers, we are not told that the good Samaritan made a great spluttering about what he did; but the professional saints, the priest and the Levite, passed by on the other side.”

“You are very complimentary,” Bootles said, blushing a little; “much more than I deserve, I’m sure. The fellows”—laughing at the remembrance—“were much less merciful. Then about the child. Dawson suggests sending it to the police-station, the colonel to the workhouse; and one means the other, of course.”

Mrs. Gray caught the child to her breast with a cry of dismay, and Bootles went on:

“Yes, I feel as you do about it. I can’t do it, and that’s all about it. It would be on my conscience all my life. Besides, some day the mother might come back for it, and though of course, as the colonel says, there is no claim upon me, yet, if for the sake of a few pounds I had turned the poor little beggar adrift, ruined its life—why I simply couldn’t face her, and that’s all about it. And besides that, Mrs. Gray, I have a lurking suspicion that the letter is genuine, and that it was not written to or intended for me. It reads to me like the letter of a woman who was desperate.”

“Yes, a woman must have been desperate indeed to willingly part with such a child as that,” said Mrs. Gray, smoothing the gold baby curls.

“So I think, for nature is nature all the world over,” Bootles answered. “And besides, to tell you the honest truth, there is a resemblance in the child to some one I knew once—”

“Yes?” eagerly.

“Oh no, not that! She is dead. She was engaged to a fellow I knew, desperately fond of him, and he—jilted her.”

“Mr. Kerr?”

Bootles stared. “Who told you?”

“He told me himself, I think to ease his mind,” she answered, quietly.

“Ah! Well, it killed her. She died heart-broken. I saw her,” he said, rising and going to the window, whence he stood staring out over the square, “a few hours after she died. That child’s mother may look like that now, and I can’t and won’t turn it adrift, whatever the fellows or any one else chooses to think or say, and that’s all about it.”

Two bright tears gathered in Mrs. Gray’s eyes, and falling, fell upon the baby’s curls of gold, two priceless diamonds from the unfathomable and exhaustless mines of pity. For a moment or two there was silence, broken at last by the child’s laugh, as a ray of sickly winter sunshine fell upon the glittering chain in its little hands. The sound recovered Bootles, who turned from the window.

“And so, Mrs. Gray,” he said, carefully avoiding the gaze of her wet eyes, “I have determined to keep the little beggar; but Harkness, who’s no fool, you know, has convinced me that it won’t do to trust to any of the barrack women to look after her. Therefore, if you won’t mind undertaking it for a few days, I will advertise for a respectable elderly nurse to take entire charge of the creature. I dare say I can arrange with Smithers for an extra room, and you’ll let me come to you for advice now and then, won’t you?”

Mrs. Gray rose and went close to him, laying her hand upon his arm. “Captain Ferrers,” she said, earnestly, “you will have your reward. God will bless you for this.”

[Picture: Mrs. Gray rose and went close to him, laying her hand upon his arm]

“Oh, please don’t, Mrs. Gray,” Bootles stammered. “Really I’d rather you’d chaff me.”

Mrs. Gray laughed outright. “Well, you know what my sentiments are, so for the future I will chaff you unmercifully.—Come in,” she added, in a louder tone, as a “tap-tap” sounded on the door.

The permission was followed by the entrance of Lacy, who came in with a pleasant “Good—er—morning,” and a soft laugh at the sight of the baby on the sofa.

“I—er—thought old Bootles would be here,” he explained. “And besides—I—er—wanted to see the babay. Seems to me, Bootles,” he added, staring with an absurd air of reflective wisdom at the infant, “as if the face is somehow familiar to me. Oh, I don’t mean you. It isn’t a bit like you. But there is a likeness, though I don’t know where to plant it.”

“Perhaps it will grow,” suggested Bootles.

“Ah! pewraps it will, and pewraps it won’t. The worst of the affair is that it is cwreating a pwrecedent”—not for worlds would he have admitted to his friend that he thought him the fine fellow he had declared him in the mess-room that morning—“and if we are _all_ inundated with babays I wreally don’t know” (plaintively) “what the wregiment will come to.”

“Gar—ah—gar—ah!” chuckled the subject of this speech over the gold knob at the top of Lacy’s whip. “Cluck—cluck—cluck!”

“Little beggah seems to find it a good joke, any way,” Lacy cried. “I’m a gwreat hand at nursing. Our adjutant’s wife in the White Dwragoons had thwree—all at once. I say, Mrs. Gwray, stick something on it, and I’ll take it out and show it wround.”

“Dare you?” she asked.

“Dawre I? Just twry. By-the-bye, it’s cold this morning—vewry cold.”

Mrs. Gray therefore fetched the child’s white coat and cap and those other white woollen articles, which Bootles now discovered to be leggings, and quickly transformed the little woman into a sort of snowball. The two men watched the operation with intense interest.

“_La figlia del wreggimento_,” laughed Lacy. “I declare, Bootles, she’s quite a credit to us. I never saw such a _petite mademoiselle_.”

Bootles started. It reminded him who had been jilted by his friend and died for love. He had always called her Mademoiselle Mignon.

“Mademoiselle Mignon,” he said, carelessly; “not a bad name for her.”

“Vewry good,” returned Lacy, preparing to present arms.

He proved himself a much better nurse than Bootles. He gathered the child on his left arm and marched off to the anteroom, in front of which the officers were standing about, waiting for church. They set up a shout at the sight of him, and crowded round to inspect the new importation. Mademoiselle Mignon bore the inspection calmly, conscious perhaps—as she was such a knowing little person—of the effect of her big, blue, star-like eyes under the white fur of her cap.

“What a pity she ain’t twenty years older!” was the first comment, and it was said in such a tone of genuine regret that all the fellows laughed again. Miss Mignon gobbled with satisfaction.

“Seems a jolly little beggar,” said another.

“Chut—chut—chut!” remarked Miss Mignon.

“Never saw such a jolly little beggar in all my life,” asserted another voice.

“Pretty work she’ll make in the regiment sixteen or seventeen years hence,” grumbled old Garnet.

“Ah, well, nevah mind, Garnet—nevah you mind, Major Garnet, sir,” cried Hartog, “we shall all be dead by then;” but this being an exceedingly old and threadbare regimental joke was instantly snubbed in the face of the new and substantial one.

“Has it any teeth?” demanded Miles, the orderly officer for the day.

“Don’t know. Open your mouth, little one,” said Lacy, gravely.

At this point Miss Mignon made a delighted lunge in the direction of the belt across Miles’s breast. Lacy shouted, “Whoa, whoa,” and Miles immediately backed out of reach. Miss Mignon’s mouth went dismally down, until Lacy remembered the knob of his whip, and held it up for delectation.

“Boo—boo!” she crowed.

“By Jove! She can half say Bootles already,” ejaculated Hartog. “And here he comes.”

“Now, then,” Bootles called out, “have any of you fellows made up your mind to own this little baggage?”

“No; none of us,” they laughed; but one man, Gilchrist by name, said, with a sneer, he should rather think not, and added two unnecessary words—“_workhouse brat_!”

Bootles turned, and looked down upon him in profoundest contempt.

“My dear chap,” he said, coolly, “to charge _you_ with being the father of _that_ child,” pointing with his whip to the picture in Lacy’s arms, “would be a compliment on your personal appearance which I should never, under any circumstances, have dreamed of paying you.”

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Hartog afterwards to Lacy, “Bootles is a dashed good fellow—one of the best fellows in the world. I don’t know that there’s another I’d trust as far or as thoroughly; but all the same, Bootles is sometimes best left alone, and, for my part, I think Gilchrist and every one else had best leave him alone about this youngster.”

“Ya—as,” returned Lacy; then began to laugh. “Oh! but it was fine, though, about ‘personal appearance.’” And then he added, “Ugly little beast!”