Esther knew more than that. She knew that there was a Cohen in the house. She was not supposed to form friendships, but she cherished two or three in secret, and one of them bore the name of Cohen.

To Esther she was always "the lady mit the from-gold hair," but she had heard a neighbor once address her as Mrs. Cohen. She lived in what must have been, in the days of the house's grandeur, the "'tweeny's" room in the servants' quarters, on the top floor. A tiny little room it was, whose one window opened now upon a blank wall, though the 'tweeny may have sat at it and watched the locks and the slow ca.n.a.l-boats where now Ca.n.a.l Street runs. There in the dimness Esther, on her surrept.i.tious way back from a surrept.i.tious visit to the friendly Top Floor Front, had discovered the lady mit the from-gold hair, and the lady was crying.

Esther's heart swelled and almost burst beneath the square breastplate of her ap.r.o.n, and presently the lady, looking up, met two deep wells of sorrow and admiration fixed upon her. And so their friendship began. It persisted, despite Mrs. Moriarty's warnings, and despite, too, the barrier of alien tongue, for the speech of this stranger was greatly different from the Yiddish spoken in that Polish and Russian quarter. In the other wordless ways of love, however, she threw her lonely little heart at the feet of the lonely lady, and knew that another secret must lie between her and the home circle in the drawing-room.

The load of such deceptions upon her conscience was not heavy. There was only the kindly Top Floor Front, the janitor, and Rebecca Einstein, who lived next door, and who was in Esther's cla.s.s at school, when she was not nursing old and new babies at home.

Mrs. Moriarty disapproved of the Einsteins. Her complaint was that there were too many of them, and that thirteen was an unlucky number for a party, whether family or otherwise. But to Esther their number was their greatest charm, and after a visit to their crowded and uproarious circle, the quiet drawing-room seemed very chill and empty.

When Jacob came home that night, Esther was awake and waiting for him with a proposition.

The Einsteins, she announced, had a superfluous baby. Would not he, out of his loving bounty, buy it for her? It was a boy, and she, Esther, desired beyond all things else a baby brother. She had reason to believe that this one was really hers. She had forwarded an application to the proper quarters.

Jacob took his little girl on his knee and explained the situation to her.

Purchase, so his instructions ran, was not the usual method of acquiring infants. One took them, or did without them, as the big Stork pleased.

It is true that babies sometimes were adopted. If, when she grew a little older and he a little richer, she still desired a brother, they might manage to adopt one, but not, as he told her when he restored her to her crib, not until he had found her Aunt Esther.

And when he had eaten his supper he came again to Esther's little bed and told her, as he sometimes did, stories of another little brother and sister who had loved and played together in the long ago. And he told her, too, more graphically than Mrs. Moriarty could, of that brother's desperate search for his sister. Of all the promising clews which led nowhere; of all the high hopes which ended in despair. For two months he had neglected his business and his daughter for this search, and he was beginning to believe that his sister was dead.

Esther caressed and comforted him as best she might, and after holding her silently for a few moments, he carefully tucked her into bed again, and went out into the crowded, sordid streets, to search--hopelessly and doggedly--for the little sister of his childhood.

As the days pa.s.sed and her father confided more and more in her great love and sympathy, Esther became reconciled to the Stork's mistake, and decided that she could wait until he brought a baby without urging or request. She was very busy. Her lady mit the from-gold hair was ill--very ill, indeed. She lay upon her bed very white and quiet, and the First Floor Front took care of her. There was also occasionally a doctor, and there were always the garrulous, if not over-helpful neighbors. In any other case it is possible that Mrs. Moriarty's known generosity and surmised skill would have been called into requisition, but the lady mit the from-gold hair spoke no English, and Esther entreated that Mrs. Moriarty should not be consulted, as that would mean her own instant banishment to the lonely drawing-room. And so Mrs.

Moriarty was allowed to form her own explanation for Esther's long absences, while Esther, light of hand and step, served her golden-haired lady friend.

Mrs. Moriarty's natural supposition had been that Esther was with the baby so carelessly turned over to the Einsteins; and occasionally, of course, she did visit that official error. But as its novelty diminished and its lung power increased Esther became reconciled to the mistake.

"He cried, awful," Rebecca would explain, "und we didn't really need him. We had lots. The old baby ain't yet so big. She couldn't to stand even. Und she needs all her clothes. My poor mamma has it pretty hard."

"Ain't it funny?" mused Esther, all unconscious that she was grappling with a world problem. "Ain't it funny, Becky? You got too many families, und so you gets some more. I ain't got no families, und I loses mine auntie. Ain't it fierce?"

"It sure is fierce," her friend admitted through the howls of the youngest Einstein. "But don't you care, Esther. I guess, maybe, that Stork will get round to your order soon. _One_ baby," she spoke from experience and with conviction, "is lots of family."

"I don't know do I needs that kind from baby what you got," Esther objected. "It's an awful loud baby, ain't it?"

"It is," Rebecca admitted. And any one of the fifteen Einsteins or even any neighbor to the fourth or fifth house removed would have corroborated her.

"Und it's got black hair," Esther further objected.

"They all do when they ain't redheaded," retorted the now ruffled Rebecca. "Ain't you got nothin' to do on'y knockin' other people's babies? First off you says he's yours, und now you says he's too loud und too black. Well, he ain't too loud or too black fer me. You wait till your own baby comes. Maybe you'll get somethin' worster, with fish's faces, maybe. How will you like that? You can't never tell what kind they're goin' to be, an' you've _got_ to keep 'em."

This haphazard system--or the lack of it--rather alarmed Esther, though the desire for a baby of her own design and choosing was growing stronger every day. For her loneliness was growing, too. Jacob was hardly ever at home. He spent many of his days and all of his evenings in his fruitless, endless search. And Mrs. Moriarty had begun to help him through some subterranean first-cousin-twice-removed channel which connected her with a member of the police force. She was making a canva.s.s of the women's lodging-houses near the Bowery.

So Esther, having much time upon her hands, turned her thoughts again to the upbringing of a brother, and wrote again to the headquarters in Central Park, and impressed upon the authorities--in large round writing upon a sheet of pink paper with two turtle doves embossed upon it--that she was not in a hurry for her baby, and would prefer to wait until they found a really acceptable article. If possible, she would prefer from-gold hair, blue eyes, and a silent tongue. For such an infant her outgrown crib, a warm welcome, and comfortable home were waiting. No others need apply.

When this letter was despatched she felt greatly relieved, and set about the nursing of the lady mit the from-gold hair with renewed energy. And the lady needed her little friend and welcomed her always with a gentle smile, though a large and unwonted female was now regularly established in the room, from which she relentlessly barred more disturbing and autobiographical visitors.

All through her illness, indeed ever since her first coming into that house, she had kept the door open, and she lay so that she could watch the stairs. Whom she was waiting for she never told, but she was always listening. She knew the step of every fellow lodger, of the doctor, of any one who had ever once climbed those stairs. And at the approach of any new footstep she would sit up rigidly among her pillows, staring and listening so intently that when the new-comer appeared and brought disappointment, she would sink back gasping and exhausted.

"What does she says?" Esther once asked the imposing nurse, when a visitor for the Top Floor Front had precipitated one of these attacks.

"What does she says when she cries?"

"She says," interpreted the nurse, "'He is dead. It must be that he is dead.' Yet we _know_ that her husband is dead. She still expects some one."

"Maybe," said Esther, arguing from her own state of mind to that of her friend, "maybe she expects a Stork mit babies."

The woman caught Esther by the shoulders and peered down into her eyes.

"So they have been talking to you," she said with immense scorn. "Oh, those women!"

"n.o.body ain't told me nothings," Esther answered. "I don't _know_ nothings. Only I thinks it in mine heart. And anyway, the first baby what comes here is mine. I writes on the Central Park a letter over it.

It's going to be a boy mit from-gold hair."

"Well," snorted the nurse with some professional pique, "it's good you got _that_ settled."

Late that night Esther awoke in her little outgrown crib. A familiar series of sounds had disturbed her: the arrival of the doctor. So the lady mit the from-gold hair was presumably worse. The doctor's steps mounted into the darkness and silence of the sleeping house, and the clock in Mrs. Moriarty's room struck two. Esther lay wide-eyed in the dark and waited for the sound of the doctor's return, but she heard nothing except the far-away clang and shriek of an occasional cable-car and the sound of stealthy, hurrying feet upon the sidewalk. She sat up, and in the dim reflection from the electric light on the street corner she distinguished the shapeless bulk that was her sleeping father. Jacob had only recently come in from his quest, and he slept the sleep of exhaustion.

Cold had no terrors for her; she was clad, feet and all, in an Esquimaux garment of brilliant pink flannel of Mrs. Moriarty's contriving.

And still the doctor did not come down. Esther climbed to the floor and noiselessly unlocked the door. In the hall a deadly quiet served as a background for Mr. Finkelstein's snoring. And then Esther's summons came. Shrill and clear from the darkness above dropped the cry of a new-born child. Hers! The Stork had blundered again.

"Oh, my!" wailed Esther, "ain't Storks the fools? In all my world I ain't never seen how he makes mistakes. I told him just as plain: Second Floor Front. Und extra he goes und maybe wakes up the lady mit the from-gold hair over it. She's got it hard enough 'out no babies yelling."

As Esther toiled toward the sound, she realized that yet another mistake had been made, it was 'a loud one.' Now what would her father say--and Mrs. Moriarty? But this was no time for such questioning. Her plain duty was to collect her property and prevent its disturbing the whole house.

When she reached her friend's room she found that the disturbance had taken place and was still in progress. The nurse, the doctor, and the Top Floor Front were gathered about the bed, presumably rea.s.suring their patient, and upon a pillow thrown into a rocking-chair the Stork had left Esther's gold-haired brother.

Oh! it was easy, fatally easy, to recognize the answer to her pet.i.tion!

The noise subsided as Esther noiselessly pattered over to it, and from an end of its roll of flannel a bright head projected. Esther picked it up and beat a hasty retreat un.o.bserved by the workers at the bedside.

Down the dark stairs she pa.s.sed with her burden, and into the drawing-room again. She snuggled down beside it in her crib and for a few ecstatic moments held it in her arms. The clock struck four, and, as Esther quivered and listened still for the descent of the doctor, the baby raised up its voice again in one prolonged and breathless yell.

Jacob was beside the crib in an instant and had his daughter in his arms.

"What is it?" he questioned wildly. "Where is it? What hurt thee?" And then his heart too skipped a beat, for he found that though he had Esther in his arms he had left her voice in the crib.

"It ain't me," she finally managed to a.s.sure him. "It's mine little brother what I gets out of the Central Park."

Lights, Mrs. Moriarty, explanations, and expostulations followed.

"I tells that Stork," Esther ended, "I tells him I ain't got no families und no aunties, und I needs a baby, und I has a bed ready. It _is_ mine baby. Storks is crazy fools!"

But the inexorable John Nolan set out upon his mission of rest.i.tution.

Esther, puzzled, heart-broken, argumentative, sped on before, and reached, not without some skirmishing, the side of the golden-haired lady, while her father was still struggling with the darkness and his unaccustomed burden.

And then the miracles began. The lady heard a step upon the stairs and a great radiance fell upon her. Wonder, incredulity, and joy shone in her lovely eyes. The doctor's hand was on her wrist. The nurse's admonitions were in her ears. But she raised herself among her pillows and watched the turn of the stairs where a shaft of light streamed through the open door.

Esther's father came out of the darkness, and the lady wrenched her hand from the doctor and stretched both her arms toward the oncoming figure, and "Jacob," said she, and quite gently fainted into the doctor's arms.

"No excitement, no fuss," commanded that authority. "She's all right, coming round in a minute. Here, stand there. Speak naturally to her.

There, she's coming now."