"You!" I was very tired, and something long held back struggled for utterance. "You!" The word was half a sob. "If only you--" Mrs. Mundy was coming down the hall, and at the door her hands went out to take the child from Selwyn. "Bettina told me, and I thought perhaps you'd bring the little creature here. I've got a place all fixed. You are tired out." She turned to me, and then to Selwyn. "Thank you, sir, for taking care of her--for going with her and bringing her back. I'm sorry I wasn't here to do it myself. She's needing of some one to look after her." Turning, she went down the hall with the child in her arms, and Selwyn, also turning, walked down the steps and got into the cab. CHAPTER XXII The one day in the year I heartily hate is the first day of January. Yesterday was January first. Its usual effect is to make me feel as the grate in my sitting-room looks when the fire is dead. Knowing the day would get ahead of me if I did not get ahead of it, I decided to give a party. Last night I gave it. All through the busy rush of Christmas with its compelling demands I have been trying not to think; trying to put from me memories that come and go of Mrs. Cotter, of my disappointment in not hearing from her where Etta Blake could be found, and my anxiety about little Nora, now in the care of a woman I know well who lives just out of town. The child will not be here next Christmas. Kitty is paying for all her needs. She asked that I would let her the day before I received Selwyn's note concerning Nora. I promised her first. Mr. Crimm cannot find Etta Blake. She must have gone away. In the past few weeks I have seen little of Selwyn. I have been a bit more than busy with Christmas preparations, and his mortification over Harrie's behavior since the latter's return from El Paso has kept him away even from me. Madeleine Swink I have seen several times, also Tom Cressy, but Mrs. Swink I have been spared, owing to absence from home when she returned my call. I have told Madeleine that she must not meet Tom here again until she breaks her engagement with Harrie and tells her mother she will not marry him. I cannot help her marry Tom unless she is open and square with her mother. She thinks I am hard, but I will agree to nothing else. It isn't easy to be patient with halting, hesitating, helpless people, and Madeleine, having long been dominated, is a rather spiritless person. Still, she is the sort one always feels sorry for. I wish I wasn't mixed up in her affairs, however. They aren't my business and fingers put in other people's pies are likely to get pinched. Then, too, my fingers have many other things to do.