bread out of the bread box. The milk’s yours—all that ain’t used. Say, Bo, honest, what you got there?”
Jamie sat down suddenly. His solution of what he was to do with James Lewis MacFarlane, Junior, had been to transfer him to the care of Margaret Cameron. He had planned to ask his neighbour to take the child and care for it until he could find the right kind of a woman to undertake the job. In the back of his head there had been a hope as he had driven out that Margaret would use on the baby the same cleanliness, deftness, and expert care with which Jamie had not a doubt, from her brand of housekeeping and cooking, she had reared her own family. Of all the bad luck that he had experienced in his unlucky days, nothing had been much worse than that Margaret Cameron should have chosen to go pleasuring, should have selected the day to start a vacation when he needed her the very worst. Jamie set down the suitcase and produced the front door key.
“Unlock the door,” he said to the little Scout, and together they went in.
Jamie laid the small bundle on the davenport and then he stepped back and drew his hands over his perplexed face and said to the Scout Master, “I wish you’d tell me what am I going to do.”
“What’s eatin’ you?” inquired the small person, casually.
Jamie pointed to the bundle.
“That’s a baby,” he said, “a live baby that needs nursing and feeding and loving, and I thought Margaret
