CHAPTER V

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.