“You are very complimentary,” Bootles said, blushing a little; “much more than I deserve, I’m sure. The fellows”—laughing at the remembrance—“were much less merciful. Then about the child. Dawson suggests sending it to the police-station, the colonel to the workhouse; and one means the other, of course.” Mrs. Gray caught the child to her breast with a cry of dismay, and Bootles went on: “Yes, I feel as you do about it. I can’t do it, and that’s all about it. It would be on my conscience all my life. Besides, some day the mother might come back for it, and though of course, as the colonel says, there is no claim upon me, yet, if for the sake of a few pounds I had turned the poor little beggar adrift, ruined its life—why I simply couldn’t face her, and that’s all about it. And besides that, Mrs. Gray, I have a lurking suspicion that the letter is genuine, and that it was not written to or intended for me. It reads to me like the letter of a woman who was desperate.” “Yes, a woman must have been desperate indeed to willingly part with such a child as that,” said Mrs. Gray, smoothing the gold baby curls. “So I think, for nature is nature all the world over,” Bootles answered. “And besides, to tell you the honest truth, there is a resemblance in the child to some one I knew once—” “Yes?” eagerly. “Oh no, not that! She is dead. She was engaged to a fellow I knew, desperately fond of him, and he—jilted her.” “Mr. Kerr?” Bootles stared. “Who told you?” “He told me himself, I think to ease his mind,” she answered, quietly. “Ah! Well, it killed her. She died heart-broken. I saw her,” he said, rising and going to the window, whence he stood staring out over the square, “a few hours after she died. That child’s mother may look like that now, and I can’t and won’t turn it adrift, whatever the fellows or any one else chooses to think or say, and that’s all about it.” Two bright tears gathered in Mrs. Gray’s eyes, and falling, fell upon the baby’s curls of gold, two priceless diamonds from the unfathomable and exhaustless mines of pity. For a moment or two there was silence, broken at last by the child’s laugh, as a ray of sickly winter sunshine fell upon the glittering chain in its little hands. The sound recovered Bootles, who turned from the window. “And so, Mrs. Gray,” he said, carefully avoiding the gaze of her wet eyes, “I have determined to keep the little beggar; but Harkness, who’s no fool, you know, has convinced me that it won’t do to trust to any of the barrack women to look after her. Therefore, if you won’t mind undertaking it for a few days, I will advertise for a respectable elderly nurse to take entire charge of the creature. I dare say I can arrange with Smithers for an extra room, and you’ll let me come to you for advice now and then, won’t you?”