"Mr. Bassett, get all the facts you can and weave them into a readable story. No fancy writing. Our readers are plain people. There's nothing likely to break today of any account, so I'll hold half a column for you." The editor kissed Carolyn May and she started forth with Joe Bassett, giving that young man her hand. "Oh, I do hope we find my lady friend," she said eagerly. "And her baby! I know she will be pleased to have a new baby carriage. That one that got broken was a second-hand one, I think. There's a man sells 'em, and lots of other second-hand things, only two or three blocks away from where I live. The pale lady's carriage was awfully old and shabby looking." Joe Bassett looked down at her curiously. CHAPTER IV A PUZZLE Setting forth on this adventure promised to Carolyn May all that a hazard of new fortunes ever yields the young. She accompanied the _Beacon's_ new reporter with the conviction that "wonderful things" were sure to happen. To find one particular mother and baby amid the five and more million persons in the Greater City was, to her mind, a simple thing. "And I couldn't be mistaken once I saw that pale lady," she confided to Bassett, as they descended into the subway. "You see, she's got such b-e-a-_u_-tiful hair! And the baby is just as cunning! But he's an awfully thin little thing." "Your taste runs to plump babies, I fancy," suggested her companion, and he smiled upon Carolyn May. There was a serious cast to his countenance despite its naturally frank expression. "My!" exclaimed the little girl, "_all_ babies ought to be fat. If they don't start out fat how can they ever hope to grow up to be big men and women? I guess that's what the matter is with some of these awfully thin people you see. They must have been skinny babies. "My Auntie Rose Kennedy--You don't know her, do you?" "I haven't that pleasure," he said. "Well, she's awfully nice. You'd like her. Though some folks think she's stern--just at first. I did, myself," confessed Carolyn May. "And if you'd seen her spank General Bolivar with a lath--" "Spank _who_ with _what_?" gasped Bassett, suddenly aroused by her statement. "Why, yes. General Bolivar is Uncle Joe Stagg's big white turkey gob-ble-er. And he chased me. So Aunty Bose spanked him with a lath. She's very stern when she wants to be. But she had skinny babies. 'Puny' she says they were, all three of them. So they couldn't live to grow up, and they've got three stones like three white lozenges in the churchyard at the Corners." All this information rather staggered Joe Bassett. But he could not help being amused by the little girl's chatter. While they rode uptown on the subway train the journey was enlivened by similar monologues on the part of Carolyn May. There had been times when Aunty Rose Kennedy was wont to say that Carolyn's tongue "was hung in the middle and ran at both ends."