“You’ll hunt for a long time.”

“Maybe, but I’ll try.  Anyhow, it can’t be worse off than it is now.  What I’m afraid of is that it will be out of its misery before we can get hold of it.  The woman who is paid for keeping it at night doesn’t give it any milk—­just feeds it on bread soaked in water, and that is slow starvation.  It’s the way them that don’t want to keep their babies get rid of them about here.”

“The game’s up if the baby dies,” said Nell Peter, growing excited under this view of the case.  “If it only gets bread soaked in water, it can’t live.  I’ve seen that done over and over again.  They’re starving a baby on bread and water now just over from my room, and it cries and frets and moans all the time it’s awake, poor little wretch!  I’ve been in hopes for a week that they’d give it an overdose of paregoric or something else.”

“We must fix it to-night in some way,” answered Pinky.  “Where’s the room you spoke of?”

“In Grubb’s court.  You know Grubb’s court?—­a kind of elbow going off from Rider’s court.  There’s a room up there that you can get where even the police would hardly find you out.”

“Thieves live there,” said Pinky.

“No matter.  They’ll not trouble you or the baby.”

“Is the room furnished?”

“Yes.  There’s a bed and a table and two chairs.”

After farther consultation it was decided that Pinky should move at once from her present lodgings to the room in Grubb’s court, and get, if possible, possession of the baby that very night.  The moving was easily accomplished after the room was secured.  Two small bundles of clothing constituted Pinky’s entire effects; and taking these, the two girls went quietly out, leaving a week’s rent unpaid.

The night that closed this early winter day was raw and cold, the easterly wind still prevailing, with occasional dashes of rain.  In a cellar without fire, except a few bits of smouldering wood in an old clay furnace, that gave no warmth to the damp atmosphere, and with scarcely an article of furniture, a woman half stupid from drink sat on a heap of straw, her bed, with her hands clasped about her knees.  She was rocking her body backward and forward, and crooning to herself in a maudlin way.  A lighted tallow candle stood on the floor of the cellar, and near it a cup of water, in which was a spoon and some bread soaking.

“Mother Hewitt!” called a voice from the cellar door that opened on the street.  “Here, take the baby!”

Mother Hewitt, as she was called, started up and made her way with an unsteady gait to the front part of the cellar, where a woman in not much better condition than herself stood holding out a bundle of rags in which a fretting baby was wrapped.

“Quick, quick!” called the woman.  “And see here,” she continued as Mother Hewitt reached her arms for the baby; “I don’t believe you’re doing the right thing.  Did he have plenty of milk last night and this morning?”