"But, Wong, you must take it back! I don't know anything about the trick! I don't wan't the Indians coming here. Mercy!" Wong, however, had rapidly fixed his pole in its place, and swung his baskets clear of the ground, still jabbering wildly in his native tongue, and trotted away with a double-quick motion. "Wong! Wong!" called the agitated woman. "I can't throw him away! You must take him back! Wong!" But the vender of vegetables, thoroughly alarmed, had fled. "Did yez call, Miss Hoobart?" said a voice from the door. "Oh, Maggie! Oh dear! Oh! Oh! What shall we do?" cried the woman. She was trying to shake her skirts of the brown little Indian, but he merely clung the harder, and buried his face in the folds. "Ach, wurra, wurra!" said Maggie. "Oi wudden't a t'o't ut. Phere did yez git um?" "Hush, you silly girl. It's an Indian baby, and Wong brought him--and he ran away frightened--and somebody played it as a trick--and the wild, infuriated Indian population may be down upon us at any moment to recover the child!" "Ach!" screamed the girl, jumping high in the air and glancing quickly about. "Phy don't yez l'ave um in the sthrate, the turrible varmint?" "What, a tiny child, Maggie? Suppose it should freeze to death? It hasn't any clothing to speak of. Oh dear! I do wish Charles were home!" "Phat yez goin' to do?" whispered Maggie. "I don't know. Oh, I don't know! We've got to take him in, I suppose, and wait for Charles." Accordingly she walked very gingerly in, while the very diminutive savage continued to cling to the dress and hide his face. "I don't see," she said, breathing easier when the door was closed, "how I'm going to get him away from my skirt. Don't you think you could take him away, Maggie?" "Oi wudden' touch um for tin dollars!" cried the girl. "What shall we do? He will never let go." "Yez c'u'd l'ave um the skirt--take ut aff, an' put an anither wan, ye moind." "Yes, I can; that is just the thing." She slipped the outside garment in a jiffy, and the baby sat down on the floor in the midst of the pile. The warrior sat perfectly still, his big brown eyes and his wee red mouth wide open, his chubby hands playing at random with the skirt. "Oi moight go out an' infarm Misther Patrick Murphy, the gintleman policemon, mum," ventured Maggie at length. "Don't you dare to go and leave me an instant," said the woman. "There is nothing in the whole wide world to do but to watch him every minute and lock all the doors and wait for Charles. Oh dear! that I should live to see such a terrible day!" [Illustration]