Freckles Part 32

"Oh, Angel!" chattered the bewildered Freckles, "are you truly maning it? Could it be?"

"Of course it could," flashed the Angel, "because it just is!"

"But you can't prove it," wailed Freckles. "It ain't giving me a name, or me honor!"

"Freckles," said the Angel sternly, "you are unreasonable! Why, I did prove every word I said! Everything proves it! You look here! If you knew for sure that I could give you a name and your honor, and prove to you that your mother did love you, why, then, would you just go to breathing like perpetual motion and hang on for dear life and get well?"

A bright light shone in Freckles' eyes.

"If I knew that, Angel," he said solemnly, "you couldn't be killing me if you felled the biggest tree in the Limberlost smash on me!"

"Then you go right to work," said the Angel, "and before night I'll prove one thing to you: I can show you easily enough how much your mother loved you. That will be the first step, and then the remainder will all come. If my father and Mr. McLean are so anxious to spend some money, I'll give them a chance. I don't see why we haven't comprehended how you felt and so have been at work weeks ago. We've been awfully selfish. We've all been so comfortable, we never stopped to think what other people were suffering before our eyes. None of us has understood.

I'll hire the finest detective in Chicago, and we'll go to work together. This is nothing compared with things people do find out. We'll go at it, beak and claw, and we'll show you a thing or two."

Freckles caught her sleeve.

"Me mother, Angel! Me mother!" he marveled hoa.r.s.ely. "Did you say you could be finding out today if me mother loved me? How? Oh, Angel!

Nothing matters, IF ONLY ME MOTHER DIDN'T DO IT!"

"Then you rest easy," said the Angel, with large confidence. "Your mother didn't do it! Mothers of sons such as you don't do things like that. I'll go to work at once and prove it to you. The first thing to do is to go to that Home where you were and get the clothes you wore the night you were left there. I know that they are required to save those things carefully. We can find out almost all there is to know about your mother from them. Did you ever see them?"

"Yis," he replied.

"Freckles! Were they white?" she cried.

"Maybe they were once. They're all yellow with laying, and brown with blood-stains now" said Freckles, the old note of bitterness creeping in.

"You can't be telling anything at all by them, Angel!"

"Well, but I just can!" said the Angel positively. "I can see from the quality what kind of goods your mother could afford to buy. I can see from the cut whether she had good taste. I can see from the care she took in making them how much she loved and wanted you."

"But how? Angel, tell me how!" implored Freckles with trembling eagerness.

"Why, easily enough," said the Angel. "I thought you'd understand.

People that can afford anything at all, always buy white for little new babies--linen and lace, and the very finest things to be had. There's a young woman living near us who cut up her wedding clothes to have fine things for her baby. Mothers who love and want their babies don't buy little rough, ready-made things, and they don't run up what they make on an old sewing machine. They make fine seams, and tucks, and put on lace and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g by hand. They sit and st.i.tch, and st.i.tch--little, even st.i.tches, every one just as careful. Their eyes s.h.i.+ne and their faces glow. When they have to quit to do something else, they look sorry, and fold up their work so particularly. There isn't much worth knowing about your mother that those little clothes won't tell. I can see her putting the little st.i.tches into them and smiling with s.h.i.+ning eyes over your coming. Freckles, I'll wager you a dollar those little clothes of yours are just alive with the dearest, tiny handmade st.i.tches."

A new light dawned in Freckles' eyes. A tinge of warm color swept into his face. Renewed strength was noticeable in his grip of her hands.

"Oh Angel! Will you go now? Will you be hurrying?" he cried.

"Right away," said the Angel. "I won't stop for a thing, and I'll hurry with all my might."

She smoothed his pillow, straightened the cover, gave him one steady look in the eyes, and went quietly from the room.

Outside the door, McLean and the surgeon anxiously awaited her. McLean caught her shoulders.

"Angel, what have you done?" he demanded.

The Angel smiled defiance into his eyes.

"'What have I done?'" she repeated. "I've tried to save Freckles."

"What will your father say?" groaned McLean.

"It strikes me," said the Angel, "that what Freckles said would be to the point."

"Freckles!" exclaimed McLean. "What could he say?"

"He seemed to be able to say several things," answered the Angel sweetly. "I fancy the one that concerns you most at present was, that if my father should offer me to him he would not have me."

"And no one knows why better than I do," cried McLean. "Every day he must astonish me with some new fineness."

He turned to the surgeon. "Save him!" he commanded. "Save him!" he implored. "He is too fine to be sacrificed."

"His salvation lies here," said the surgeon, stroking the Angel's suns.h.i.+ny hair, "and I can read in the face of her that she knows how she is going to work it out. Don't trouble for the boy. She will save him!"

The Angel laughingly sped down the hall, and into the street, just as she was.

"I have come," she said to the matron of the Home, "to ask if you will allow me to examine, or, better yet, to take with me, the little clothes that a boy you called Freckles, discharged last fall, wore the night he was left here."

The woman looked at her in greater astonishment than the occasion demanded.

"Well, I'd be glad to let you see them," she said at last, "but the fact is we haven't them. I do hope we haven't made some mistake. I was thoroughly convinced, and so was the superintendent. We let his people take those things away yesterday. Who are you, and what do you want with them?"

The Angel stood dazed and speechless, staring at the matron.

"There couldn't have been a mistake," continued the matron, seeing the Angel's distress. "Freckles was here when I took charge, ten years ago.

These people had it all proved that he belonged to them. They had him traced to where he ran away in Illinois last fall, and there they completely lost track of him. I'm sorry you seem so disappointed, but it is all right. The man is his uncle, and as like the boy as he possibly could be. He is almost killed to go back without him. If you know where Freckles is, they'd give big money to find out."

The Angel laid a hand along each cheek to steady her chattering teeth.

"Who are they?" she stammered. "Where are they going?"

"They are Irish folks, miss," said the matron. "They have been in Chicago and over the country for the past three months, hunting him everywhere. They have given up, and are starting home today. They----"

"Did they leave an address? Where could I find them?" interrupted the Angel.

"They left a card, and I notice the morning paper has the man's picture and is full of them. They've advertised a great deal in the city papers.

It's a wonder you haven't seen something."

"Trains don't run right. We never get Chicago papers," said the Angel.

"Please give me that card quickly. They may escape me. I simply must catch them!"

The matron hurried to the secretary and came back with a card.

"Their addresses are there," she said. "Both in Chicago and at their home. They made them full and plain, and I was to cable at once if I got the least clue of him at any time. If they've left the city, you can stop them in New York. You're sure to catch them before they sail--if you hurry."

The matron caught up a paper and thrust it into the Angel's hand as she ran to the street.