Page:The Rejuvenation Of Miss Semaphore.pdf/95

 the next step for Miss Prudence was to find a nurse who would undertake the care of Augusta. This at once landed her in difficulties. She first thought of appealing to the shop-woman, but the manner of that superior young person was so lofty that the words died on Miss Semaphore's lips. The Universal Provider certainly did not provide homes for infants. Prudence dared not ask any of her acquaintances as to a suitable person, yet could not imagine how else she was to get one. She could not seize the first respectable-looking body that passed by and ask her would she mind an infant. Like a woman with a guilty secret she wandered up and down the Grove, looking vaguely into shop windows but seeing nothing, and wondering all the time what she was to do. It seemed almost as desperate an undertaking to get rid of a baby as to get rid of a corpse.

At last the idea struck her that the laundress who washed for herself and her sister might know of someone suitable. Mrs. Robbins lived at Hammersmith, and Miss Prudence, hailing an omnibus going in that direction, got in. If Mrs. Robbins could not help her, what was she to do? As she