And suddenly--Mag!--I felt something that was a cross between a rose-leaf and a snowflake touch my hand. If it wasn't that delectable baby! I caught her and lifted her to my lap and hugged the chuckling thing as though that was what I came for. Then, in a moment, I remembered the paper and lifted her little white slip. It was gone, Mag. The under-petticoat hadn't a sign of the paper I'd pinned to it. My head whirled in that minute. I suppose I was faint with the heat, with hunger and fatigue and worry, but I felt myself slipping out of things when I heard the rustling of skirts, and there before me stood the mother of my baby. The little wretch! She deserted me and flew to that pretty mother of hers in her long, cool white trailing things, and sat in her arms and mocked at me. It was easy enough to begin talking. I told her a tale about being a newspaper woman out on a story; how I'd run across the baby and all the rest of it. "I must ask your pardon," I finished up, "for disturbing you, but two things sent me here--one to know if the baby got home safe, and the other," I gulped, "to ask about a paper with some notes that I'd pinned to her skirt." She shook her head. It was in that very minute that I noticed the baby's ribbons were pink; they had been blue in the morning. "Of course," I suggested, "you've had her clothes changed and--" "Why, yes, of course," said baby's mother. "The first thing I did when I got hold of her was to strip her and put her in a tub; the second, was to discharge that gossiping nurse for letting her out of her sight." "And the soiled things she had on--the dress with the blue ribbons?" "I'll find out," she said. She rang for the maid and gave her an order. "Was it a valuable paper?" she asked. "Not--very," I stammered. My tongue was thick with hope and dread. "Just--my notes, you know, but I do need them. I couldn't carry the baby easily, so I pinned them on her skirt, thinking--thinking--" The maid came in and dumped a little heap of white before me. I fell on my knees. Oh, yes, I prayed all right, but I searched, too. And there it was. What I said to that woman I don't know even now. I flew out through the hall and down the steps and-- And there Kitty Wilson corralled me. "Say, where's that stick-pin?" she cried. "Here!--here, you darling!" I said, pressing it into her hand. "And, Kitty, whenever you feel like swiping another purse--just don't do it. It doesn't pay. Just you come down to the Vaudeville and ask for Nance Olden some day, and I'll tell you why." "Gee!" said Kitty, impressed. "Shall--shall I call ye a hansom, lady?" Should she! The blessed inspiration of her! I got into the wagon and we drove down street--to the Vaudeville. I burst in past the stage doorkeeper, amazed to see me, and rushed into Fred Obermuller's office.