Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/86

The Loom of Destiny that he skulked hurriedly homewards with some strange parcel under his arm. Mysterious washings, too, appeared by night on the Sharkey clothes-line, and endless were the speculations as to just what hand wielded the soap-bar in that depleted household.

As for the Shanghai Sharkey himself, he often all but shuddered as he wondered what the "gang" would think if they ever knew he had turned into a house nurse. For with his own hands he fed and washed and dressed the Baby, and with his own hands he created for it a beautiful perambulator, to take the place of the lost cradle. This perambulator he made of two very wobbly tricycle wheels, purchased from Snapsie Doogan with a broken jack-knife and a paper windmill, while a box that bore the imprint of "Foxbury Rye," the latter being the special gift of Mike Donovan, did duty as body for the carriage.

It was three weeks after his mother had been taken to the hospital, one sunny day, when Timmie was sneaking shamefacedly homeward with a bottle of fresh milk for the 74