other, burned, unrecognizable bodies. You can assume if you want that the child belonged to one of them, that the nurse had picked up some other's baby—not necessarily by mistake. She may have been unable to reach the child and tried to save the first other child that offered. You can say that the substitution never was suspected, that Edith's child, escaping in some way, wandered off and was found next morning by the police officer. But it's nothing but assumption. It never can be proved. It might warrant adoption—"
The woman, still clasping Peewee, looked up at him. "It does," she asserted. "It warrants more than that, even though we can never have absolute conviction."
What was going on was incomprehensible to Peewee. He heard the words that Beman and Mrs. Markyn said, but they conveyed no meaning to him. Some child, at some time, had been burned to death in a train wreck. The unfortunate fate of this child seemed to give Peewee warrant for his own anxiety on trains. Who, he wondered, was Edith? Was she Mrs. Cord?
