Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/44

 Really he had not a chance. It was a very serious lapse from the path of duty, but what could he do, the simpleton!

"'Finding is keeping' with this bairn," said the triumphant Eliza.

It was then that the silent, anxious, hovering Harriet claimed a share of the spoils of victory.

"Eliza," she said, "if you are to be the sweet thing's mother, I must be its godmother."

"You shall be, my dear."

Harriet sealed the compact by a swift, stealthy kiss upon the cheek of the foundling, who now slept like a cherub on the knee of its new parent.

"The lamb!" whispered Eliza.

Tears of happiness came into the eyes of the mother-elect. Harriet turned suddenly away as if unable to bear the sight of them.

Said Joe to himself: "This is what I call a rum 'un." But even in the moment of his overthrow, he did not forget the philosophical outlook of that august body of men, whose trust he had betrayed. He turned to his long neglected cup of tea, now cold alas! and swallowed it at a gulp. He then went on with the solemn business of toasting bread and eating it.

To add to Joe's sense of defeat, the two women paid him no more attention now than if he had not been in the room at all.

"The sweetest thing!" whispered the one ecstatically.

"What shall we call it?" whispered the other.

"A boy or a girl?"

"Oh, a girl."

"How do you know?"