The Golden Key; Or, A Heart's Silent Worship. Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      She found it pinned to the yoke of the child’s dainty dress—an oddly fashioned trinket, the thumb-piece ornamented with a small pansy, in the heart of which there flashed a tiny but flawless diamond.

      “Well! for once I have had a genuine adventure in my plodding, practical life!” the woman muttered to herself. “Everything about this child shows that she was born of a wealthy mother—some rich girl, maybe, whose good name was more to her than the life and welfare of her own flesh and blood. Oh, dear, what a world it is! Those who yearn for these little ones are deprived of them, while there is no place, no love for others. It is a beautiful babe, too,” she continued, bending over the little sleeper and noting the soft, curling rings of glossy brown hair on the small head, the delicate, regular features of the little face, and the dainty, perfect hands that were folded on the gently heaving breast. “Poor little waif! what shall I do with you?” she concluded, with a long-drawn, regretful sigh.

      Then she sat suddenly erect, her face becoming almost as rigid as that of a statue, while she scarcely seemed to breathe, so absorbed had she become in her own startled reflections.

      “Nancy Porter, I wonder if you could manage it?—I wonder if you dare do it?” she breathed at last, with lips in which there was not an atom of color. “Alice would never survive another such tax upon her delicate constitution; Adam Brewster would never be content without an heir to his great fortune. Well, I’m going to try it, and save her heart from breaking.”

      With a resolute gleam in her gray eyes, a settled purpose in every line of her strong, honest face, she began to wrap the child in the soft, warm shawl which she had partially removed, paying no attention to the woman in charge—who at that moment came into the room and began to busily brandish a great feather duster—although she was uncomfortably conscious that she was being regarded with a curious, questioning glance.

      But Miss Nancy Porter had run many a difficult gauntlet, and faced many emergencies, during her checkered life, and her stanch heart and brave front did not fail her now.

      Having arranged everything about her charge to her satisfaction, she arose and deliberately walked from the room, passed out of the nearest door of the one beyond, and, joining the hurrying crowd that surging toward the outward-bound trains, without giving another thought to the errand which had brought her to town, found herself just in season to board a return local.

      She did not see in the car a person whom she knew; yet, knowing that there might be acquaintances on the train, she decided to leave it at a station two miles below her own town, and about a mile and a half from her home, which was located between the two villages.

      It was dark when she alighted, and it was with a deep sigh of satisfaction that she slipped away in the gloom.

      She did not meet a single person on the way—it was a lonely road, with only a few scattered farmhouses to be passed—and arrived at her own door just as the old-fashioned clock of a previous generation standing in the hall solemnly tolled off the hour of eight.

      A glance in at the kitchen window as she passed had told her that Sarah was still upstairs with her patient, and, passing softly around to the front door, which she noiselessly opened with a latchkey, she walked through the “best room” to the “parlor bedroom,” where she laid her charge upon the bed, thankful for the potency of the drug which still held its senses locked in slumber, and glad to have her aching arms relieved of their burden.

      Then, closing both doors after her, she passed up-stairs to the sick-room, removing her bonnet and wrap as she went, when she dismissed Sarah to her interrupted work in the kitchen below, and then sat down to rest and await the awakening of the frail sleeper upon the bed.

      An hour later, Miss Porter suddenly appeared in her bright, cheerful kitchen, bearing a beautiful babe in her arms, while a tender expression seemed to have softened and illumined her usually grave, almost austere face.

      “Goodness sakes, alive!” exclaimed Sarah, springing to her feet, with a startled air, her wild eyes fastened upon the infant.

      “Hush!” said Miss Porter authoritatively. “Has any one been here since I left home?”

      “Not a soul,” said the girl, but with still gaping eyes and mouth.

      “Good!” returned the mistress in a satisfied tone; “and now, Sarah, you are to remember that a baby girl was born here on Monday night, October 2. No one save you and I and Mrs. Brewster know of the fact as yet; but I shall have it recorded to-morrow morning, when a letter will also be mailed to Mr. Brewster, announcing that he has a fine little daughter.”

      “But——” began Sarah, looking dazed and troubled.

      “There are no ‘buts,’ Sarah,” curtly interposed Miss Porter; “the last forty-eight hours must become a blank; you are to know nothing, except that on the second of this month my sister gave birth to a beautiful little girl, and that both mother and child are doing well. I am sure I can trust you,” concluded the woman, looking the girl squarely in the eyes.

      “Yes, marm,” was the meek response, and Miss Porter knew that torture would never elicit the wilful betrayal of her secret after that promise was given.

      “That is right,” she said briskly, the stern lines of her face relaxing again; “and now you may take the baby while I prepare some milk for her.”

      The next day but one there appeared in the Boston Transcript the following paragraph:

      “X. Y. Z.—The golden key has unlocked a responsive heart.”

      Three weeks later a fair, sweet woman might have been seen driving through the street of F—— in an elegant carriage, which, with coachman and footman, had been ordered from New York, while by her side there sat a buxom, good-natured nurse, with a thriving baby on her lap.

      “What a lovely child!” was the tribute of every one who saw the dainty, blue-eyed little girl, who now bore the name of Allison Porter Brewster, and then wondered to see the grave, yearning look that involuntarily came into the young mother’s eyes, even while her lips smiled at the praise bestowed upon her darling.

      Meantime, messages of love and gratitude, together with costly gifts, had come across the ocean from the happy father, who was all impatience to return to his treasures.

      Another month passed, and the Brewsters were once more settled in their elegant city home, where each succeeding week only served to develop the charms of the little heiress and to endear her to the hearts of her parents.

      Early the following spring Miss Nancy Porter’s faithful Sarah was stricken with fever, which proved to be a long and tedious illness, during which she raved continually about stolen children and some dreadful secret which oppressed her.

      Miss Porter was unremitting in her care of the trusty girl; she allowed no one to share her care of her, and when she died, in spite of the best of nursing and medical attendance, the woman shed sincere, regretful tears over her.

      “I suppose it had to be,” she said sorrowfully, on her return to her lonely home after the burial. “Sarah was a good girl, and I’m sorry to lose her; but”—with suddenly whitening lips—“there’s one less in the world who knows that secret.”

      The number was again reduced when, a few months later, Nancy Porter herself was laid to rest in the “Porter lot,” and the wife of Adam Brewster was left to bear her burden СКАЧАТЬ