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“Then I suppose I must make way for Mr. Hank–Hank–Fisher?” said North, with the least tinge of sarcasm in his speech.

“Of course. You’ve got nothing else to do, you know.”

North would have given worlds to have pleaded a previous engagement on business of importance, but he knew that Bessy spoke truly. He had nothing to do. “And Fisher has, I suppose?” he asked.

“Of course–to look after ME!”

A more unpleasant evening James North had not spent since the first day of his solitude. He almost began to hate the unconscious cause of his absurd position, as he paced up and down the floor with it. “Was there ever such egregious folly?” he began, but remembering he was quoting Maria North’s favorite resume of his own conduct, he stopped. The child cried, missing, no doubt, the full rounded curves and plump arm of its nurse. North danced it violently, with an inward accompaniment that was not musical, and thought of the other dancers. “Doubtless,” he mused, “she has told this beau of hers that she has left the baby with the ‘looney’ Man on the Beach. Perhaps I may be offered a permanent engagement as a harmless simpleton accustomed to the care of children. Mothers may cry for me. The doctor is at Eureka. Of course, he will be there to see his untranslated goddess, and condole with her over the imbecility of the Man on the Beach.” Once he carelessly asked Joe who the company were.

“Well,” said Joe, mournfully, “thar’s Widder Higsby and darter; the four Stubbs gals; in course Polly Doble will be on hand with that feller that’s clerking over at the Head for Jones, and Jones’s wife. Then thar’s French Pete, and Whisky Ben, and that chap that shot Archer,–I disremember his name,–and the barber–what’s that little mulatto’s name–that ‘ar Kanaka? I swow!” continued Joe, drearily, “I’ll be forgettin’ my own next–and–“

“That will do,” interrupted North, only half concealing his disgust as he rose and carried the baby to the other room, beyond the reach of names that might shock its ladylike ears. The next morning he met the from-dance-returning Bessy abstractedly, and soon took his leave, full of a disloyal plan, conceived in the sleeplessness of her own bedchamber. He was satisfied that he owed a duty to its unknown parents to remove the child from the degrading influences of the barber Kanaka, and Hank Fisher especially, and he resolved to write to his relatives, stating the case, asking a home for the waif and assistance to find its parents. He addressed this letter to his cousin Maria, partly in consideration of the dramatic farewell of that young lady, and its possible influence in turning her susceptible heart towards his protege. He then quietly settled back to his old solitary habits, and for a week left the Robinsons unvisited. The result was a morning call by Trinidad Joe on the hermit. “It’s a whim of my gal’s, Mr. North,” he said, dejectedly, “and ez I told you before and warned ye, when that gal hez an idee, fower yoke of oxen and seving men can’t drag it outer her. She’s got a idee o’ larnin’–never hevin’ hed much schoolin’, and we ony takin’ the papers, permiskiss like–and she says YOU can teach her–not hevin’ anythin’ else to do. Do ye folly me?”

“Yes,” said North, “certainly.”

“Well, she allows ez mebbee you’re proud, and didn’t like her takin’ care of the baby for nowt; and she reckons that ef you’ll gin her some book larnin’, and get her to sling some fancy talk in fash’n’ble style–why, she’ll call it squar.”

“You can tell her,” said North, very honestly, “that I shall be only too glad to help her in any way, without ever hoping to cancel my debt of obligation to her.”

“Then it’s a go?” said the mystified Joe, with a desperate attempt to convey the foregoing statement to his own intellect in three Saxon words.