Leerie Part 7

"Pret' dress," said the senora. "Plent' lace and reebon. You put on for bury eet--I go find _padre_."

"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 senora 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 grat.i.tude 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 grat.i.tude that she heaped the atom's wardrobe--lace, ribbons, and embroidery--upon Sheila, and kissed the hem of Father O'Friel's ca.s.sock.

"_Que gracioso--que 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 s.h.i.+ning. "Honestly, don't know myself.

Still testing out my feelings in my think laboratory."

"You can't raise that baby and keep on with your nursing. Too much responsibility, anyway, for a young person. What's more, the mother shouldn't be allowed to dodge it. She can be made fit."

"How are you going to do it? Train her with harness and braces? Or moral suasion--or the courts?"

"And I thought you hated it, couldn't bear to touch it," growled the baby specialist.

"Did. But that's past tense. Since I fought for it, it's suddenly become remarkably precious. And that's the precise feeling I'm testing up in the lab."

"In the name of common sense what do you mean, Leerie?"

She patted his arm soothingly. "There, there. Go to bed; you're tuckered out. Leave me alone for two months, and I'll tell you. And suppose you write down that milk formula before you go; he's going to wake up as fighting hungry as a little tiger-cat."

How the sanitarium took the news of the arrivals and the rumor of the adoption, what they thought of the gorgeous and irresponsible senora and Leerie's latest exploit, does not concern the story. It is enough to say that tongues wagged abundantly; and when Sheila appeared some ten days later in the pine grove wheeling a perambulator every one who was out and could manufacture the flimsiest excuse for her curiosity hurried to the carriage and thrust an inquisitive head under the hood. It seemed as if hundreds blocked the walk from the pond to the rest-house.

"Bad as a circus parade," thought Sheila. "Can't stay here, or they'll put us in a tent and ask admission." Then she spied Hennessy coming with his platter of bread for the swans, and called to him. Somehow he managed to scatter the crowd, and Sheila clung to the sleeve of his blue jumper as if it had been so much cork to a man overboard. "Listen, Hennessy, I want to take Pancho away from the San. You and Marm have a cozy place, and it's far enough away. There's only the two of you. Can't you take us in?"

But Hennessy was likewise thrusting a head under the hood. "Honest to G.o.d, Miss Leerie, is it human?"

"Hennessy, don't be an idiot!"

"But I saw the face on it--an' the scratchin' it did the day it was fetched in. Does it still be scratchin'?"

"Sometimes." Sheila smiled faintly. "He hasn't had time yet to forget all those shakings. Well, can we come?"

Hennessy eyed the perambulator fearsomely. "Have to ask Marm. Faith, do ye think, now, if it had been human, its mother would have given it away same as if it had been a young cat or dog too many in the litter?"

"Mothers don't have to love their babies; there's no birth license to sign, you know, with a love-and-cherish clause in it. Just come, wanted or not, and afterward--"

But Hennessy was deep in speculations of his own. "Now if it was Ireland, Miss Leerie, do ye know what I would be thinkin'?"

"What?"

He lowered his voice and looked furtively over his shoulder. "A changeling! Sure as you're born, Miss Leerie, I'm thinkin' it's one o'

them little black imps the fairies leave in place o' the real child they're after stealin'. I disremember if they have the likes o' that in South America, but that's my notion, just the same."

Sheila O'Leary laughed inside and out. "Hennessy, you're wonderful. And who but an Irishman would have thought of it! A changeling--a most changeable changeling! What's the treatment?"

"A good brewin' of egg-sh.e.l.ls--goose egg-sh.e.l.ls if ye have 'em, hens' if ye haven't. But don't ye be laughin'; 'tis a sign o' black doin's, an'

laughin' might bring bad luck on ye."

Sheila sobered. "We'll brew egg-sh.e.l.ls. Now hurry home to Marm and coax her hard, Hennessy."

Because Sheila O'Leary invariably had her way among the many who loved and believed in her, and because Hennessy and Marm Hennessy were numbered conspicuously among these, Sheila and her adopted moved early the following morning into the diminutive and immaculate house of Hennessy, with a vine-covered porch in front and a hen-yard in the rear. And that night there was a plentiful brew of egg-sh.e.l.ls on the kitchen stove, done in the most approved Irish fas.h.i.+on, with the atom near by to inhale the fumes.

"Maybe 'twill work, an' then again maybe 'twon't." Hennessy looked anxious. "Magic, like anything else, often spoils in transportatin'."

"Oh, it will work!" Sheila spoke with conviction. "And we'll hope the senora's letter won't travel too fast."

So the names of Sheila O'Leary and Francisco Enrique Manuel Machado y Rodriguez were crossed off the books of the sanitarium, and the gossips saw them no more. Only Doctor Fuller and Peter Brooks sought them out in their new quarters, the doctor to attend professionally, Peter to attend to the dictates of a persistent heart. Never a day went by that he did not find his feet trailing the dust on the road to the house of Hennessy, and Sheila dropped into the habit of watching for him from the vine-covered porch at a certain time every afternoon. The picture of the best nurse at the sanitarium sitting in a little old rocker with the brown atom kicking and crowing on her lap, and looking down the steps with eyes that seemed to grow daily more luminous, came to be an accepted reality to both Peter and the doctor--as much of a reality as the reaching out of the atom's small tendril-like fingers to curl about one's thumb or to cling to one's watch-charm.

"Loving little cuss," muttered Peter one afternoon. "Can you tell me how any mother under the sun could resist those eyes or the clutch of those brown paws?"

"Don't forget one point," Sheila spoke quietly; "he wasn't a loving little cuss then."

"He'll go down on the books as my pet case," chuckled the doctor. "Four pounds in four weeks! Think of it, on a whole-milk formula!"

Hennessy wagged his head knowingly at Sheila, and when they had gone he snorted forth his contempt for professional ignorance. "Milk!

Fiddlesticks! Sure a docthor don't know everything. 'Twas the egg-sh.e.l.ls that done it, an' Marm an' me can bear witness he quit the scratchin' an'

began the smilin' from that very hour. Look at him now! Can ye deny it, Miss Leerie?"

"I'm not wanting to, Hennessy." Whereupon Sheila proved the matter by reducing the atom to squeals of joy while she retold the old history of the pigs with the aid of five little brown toes.

Between Peter and Hennessy, Sheila came into possession of many facts concerning the senora. Her dresses and her jewels were the talk of the sanitarium. She applied herself diligently to all beautifying treatments and the charming of susceptible young men. Presumably life to her meant only a continuous process of adorning herself and receiving admiration. So she spent her days dressing and basking in the company of a dozen different swains, and the atom cast no annoying shadow on her pathway.

August came, and the atom discovered his legs. Sheila disregarded the lace and ribbons with a sigh of relief and took to making rompers. They were adorable rompers with smocking and the palest of pink collars and belts.

The licorice sticks had changed to a rich olive brown and had a.s.sumed sufficient rotundity to allow of pink-and-white socks and white ankle-ties. In all the busy years of her nursing Sheila had never had time for anything like this; she had never had a baby for longer than a week or two at a time. Just as she was beginning to feel her individual share in them they had all gone the way of properly parented offspring, and never had she sewed a single baby dress. She gloried in the lengths of dimity and poplin, in the intricacies of new st.i.tches and embroidery. And Peter, watching from a step on the porch, gloried in the picture she made.

When a romper was finished it had to be tried on that very minute. She would whisk up the atom from the hammock where he lay kicking, and slip him into it, holding him high for Peter to admire.

"He's a cherub done in bronze," said Peter, one day. "Here, give him to me." And later, as he perched him on his shoulder and tickled his ribs until he squirmed with glee he announced, "If I wasn't a homeless bachelor I'd take him off your hands in about two minutes."

"What's that?" shouted Doctor Fuller, coming down the street. "Did you say anything about re-adoption? Well, you might as well know now that Mrs.

Fuller and I intend taking Pancho off Leerie's hands as soon as she's ready to go back to work again. Aren't you getting lazy, Leerie?"