“Ye asked me about the baby there,” she said, at length, without appearing to notice the tears that filled poor Catharine’s eyes. “That hathenish nurse was nigh gettin’ the upper hands of me. You remember how she let on to the doctor that it was drinkin’ I’d been when the heavy sickness fell on me after takin’ a sup of yer medicine, and he, poor innocent, belaved her, an’ took away the child that I was fond of a’most as if it was my own flesh and blood.” Catharine looked up and inquired how it came about that she got the child back again. “This is the way,” answered Margaret. “I did not like the woman that nurse Kelly gave the little orphan to when ye begged so hard to keep it. The heart in my bosom felt like a cold stone when I saw her gathering it up like a bundle under her shawl. There was starvation and murther in her face; more than that, she was faregathing wid nurse Kelly, an’ that was another rason agin her. Well, wid these feelins I couldn’t eat or sleep wid thinkin’ of the child, for it seemed to me as plain as the sun that some harm was coming to the little soul. So afore they sent me away from the hospital I inquired, aisy, ye know, where the woman that had got me baby lived, and it turned out that an acquaintance of my own was in the same tinament. When a week was over, I went to visit my acquaintance—d’ye see—and in an aisy sort o’ way asked about the woman and the baby. It was just as I had thought; the woman was niver at home, but went out to her reglar day’s work, laying the poor little orphan all alone in a basket, sound asleep, in consequence of the laud’num and them soothin’-drops. I went into the room to see it, and there it lay in an old basket on a heap of rags, wid its little eyes shut, and a purple ring under ’em. It had famished away till its own mother, if she had lived, wouldn’t a known it. “Well, I couldn’t stand that, so without sayin’ a word I up an’ takes the crathur in my arms, and walks off to the Alms house in the Park, and there I laid the child that still slept like a log, down afore the gintlemen that sit there for the good o’ the poor, ivery day of the blessed year, and says I,— “‘Are ye magestrates and gintlemen,’ says I, ‘to sit here while the poor orphan childer that ye should be fathers to,’ says I, ‘are bein’ starved and poisoned with black dhrops under yer honorable noses?’ says I. Wid that, afore the gintlemen could say a word for themselves, I unfolded the rags that the baby was wrapped in, and laid its little legs an’ arms huddled together like a fagot afore ’em, and says I agin,— “‘Look here, if yese got the heart for it, an’ see for yerselves.’ “Thin one of the gintlemen up an’ spoke for himself, and says he,— “‘The nurses are all compelled to bring their children here for inspection once in two weeks, an’ the time has but just gone by. How can this be?’ an’ he was mighty sorry an’ put out, I could see that plain enough.