"No," said Sheila, emphatically, "you stay here. I'll go and find the _padre_." She left them both in the charge of the corridor nurse and flew for the telephone. It took her less than a minute to get Father O'Friel; it took but a trifle more for her to outline her plan and bind him to it. And Father O'Friel, with a comprehension to match his conscientiousness, and a sense of humor to match them both, hardly knew whether to be shocked or amused. "Why not appeal to the baby's father?" "Realize it takes a month for a letter to reach that little South American ant-hill? Write now if you want to, but let me be trying my way while the letter is traveling." "All right. But if it doesn't work--" "It will. When my feelings about anything run all to the good this way, I'd bank anything on them. Now please hurry." So it came about that instead of a burial service that night Father O'Friel conducted an original and unprecedented adoption ceremony. Without even a witness the señora signed a paper which she showed no inclination to read and which she would hardly have understood had she attempted it. It was enough for her that she could give away Francisco Enrique Manuel Machado y Rodriguez to a foolish nurse who was plainly anxious to be bothered with him. Death had seemed the only release from an obligation that exhausted and frightened her, and from which neither pleasure nor personal pride could be obtained. But this was another way mercifully held out to her, and she accepted it with gratitude and absolute belief. Eagerly she agreed to the conditions Sheila laid down; the father was to be notified and forced to make a life settlement on the atom; in the mean time she was to remain at the sanitarium, pay all expenses, and interfere in no way with the nurse or the baby. So desirous was she to display her gratitude that she heaped the atom's wardrobe--lace, ribbons, and embroidery--upon Sheila, and kissed the hem of Father O'Friel's cassock. "_Qué gracioso--qué magnifico!_" Then she yawned behind her tinted nails. "I have ver' much the sleep. I find anothaire room and make what you call--_la cama_." At the door she turned and cast a farewell look upon the blanketed bundle. "Eet look ver' ugly--all the same I theenk eet die." It took barely ten minutes for word of the adoption to reach Doctor Fuller, and it brought him running. "Good Lord! Leerie, are you crazy? Did you think I pulled you out of bed to-night to start an orphan-asylum? What do you mean, girl?" Sheila looked down at her newly acquired possession, and for the first time that night the strange, luminous look that was all her own, that had won for her her nickname of Leerie, crept into her eyes; they fairly dazzled the old doctor with their shining. "Honestly, don't know myself. Still testing out my feelings in my think laboratory."