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When Jacob came home that night, Esther was awake and waiting for him with a proposition.

The Einsteins, she announced, had a superfluous baby. Would not he, out of his loving bounty, buy it for her? It was a boy, and she, Esther, desired beyond all things else a baby brother. She had reason to believe that this one was really hers. She had forwarded an application to the proper quarters.

Jacob took his little girl on his knee and explained the situation to her.

Purchase, so his instructions ran, was not the usual method of acquiring infants. One took them, or did without them, as the big Stork pleased. It is true that babies sometimes were adopted. If, when she grew a little older and he a little richer, she still desired a brother, they might manage to adopt one, but not, as he told her when he restored her to her crib, not until he had found her Aunt Esther.

And when he had eaten his supper he came again to Esther’s little bed and told her, as he sometimes did, stories of another little brother and sister who had loved and played together in the long ago. And he told her, too, more graphically than Mrs. Moriarty could, of that brother’s desperate search for his sister. Of all the promising clews which led nowhere; of all the high hopes which ended in despair. For two months he had neglected his business and his daughter for this search, and he was beginning to believe that his sister was dead.

Esther caressed and comforted him as best she might, and after holding her silently for a few moments, he carefully tucked her into bed again, and went out into the crowded, sordid streets, to search–hopelessly and doggedly–for the little sister of his childhood.

As the days passed and her father confided more and more in her great love and sympathy, Esther became reconciled to the Stork’s mistake, and decided that she could wait until he brought a baby without urging or request. She was very busy. Her lady mit the from-gold hair was ill–very ill, indeed. She lay upon her bed very white and quiet, and the First Floor Front took care of her. There was also occasionally a doctor, and there were always the garrulous, if not over-helpful neighbors. In any other case it is possible that Mrs. Moriarty’s known generosity and surmised skill would have been called into requisition, but the lady mit the from-gold hair spoke no English, and Esther entreated that Mrs. Moriarty should not be consulted, as that would mean her own instant banishment to the lonely drawing-room. And so Mrs. Moriarty was allowed to form her own explanation for Esther’s long absences, while Esther, light of hand and step, served her golden-haired lady friend.

Mrs. Moriarty’s natural supposition had been that Esther was with the baby so carelessly turned over to the Einsteins; and occasionally, of course, she did visit that official error. But as its novelty diminished and its lung power increased Esther became reconciled to the mistake.

“He cried, awful,” Rebecca would explain, “und we didn’t really need him. We had lots. The old baby ain’t yet so big. She couldn’t to stand even. Und she needs all her clothes. My poor mamma has it pretty hard.”

“Ain’t it funny?” mused Esther, all unconscious that she was grappling with a world problem. “Ain’t it funny, Becky? You got too many families, und so you gets some more. I ain’t got no families, und I loses mine auntie. Ain’t it fierce?”

“It sure is fierce,” her friend admitted through the howls of the youngest Einstein. “But don’t you care, Esther. I guess, maybe, that Stork will get round to your order soon. One baby,” she spoke from experience and with conviction, “is lots of family.”

“I don’t know do I needs that kind from baby what you got,” Esther objected. “It’s an awful loud baby, ain’t it?”