“Just look!” she would say, opening her arms.  “If I could only steal it!”

The Senior, who had once been beautiful and was now calm and placid, smiled at her.  Old Maggie must peer and cry out over the child.  Irish Delia must call down a blessing on it.  And so up the ward to the Avenue Girl; the Probationer laid the baby in her arms.

“Just a minute,” she explained.  “I’m idling and I have no business to.  Hold it until I give the three o’clocks.”  Which means the three-o’clock medicines.

When she came back the Avenue Girl had a new look in her eyes; and that day the little gleam of hope, that usually died, lasted and grew.

At last came the day when the alibi was to be brought forward.  The girl had written home and the home folks were coming.  In his strange way the Dummy knew that a change was near.  The kaleidoscope would shift again and the Avenue Girl would join the changing and disappearing figures that fringed the inner circle of his heart.

One night he did not go to bed in the ward bed that was his only home, beside the little stand that held his only possessions.  The watchman missed him and found him asleep in the chapel in one of the seats, with the parrot drowsing on the altar.

Rose—­who was the stout woman—­came early.  She wore a purple dress, with a hat to match, and purple gloves.  The ward eyed her with scorn and a certain deference.  She greeted the Avenue Girl effusively behind the screens that surrounded the bed.

“Well, you do look pinched!” she said.  “Ain’t it a mercy it didn’t get to your face!  Pretty well chewed up, aren’t you?”

“Do you want to see it?”

“Good land!  No!  Now look here, you’ve got to put me wise or I’ll blow the whole thing.  What’s my little stunt?  The purple’s all right for it, isn’t it?”

“All you need to do,” said the Avenue Girl wearily, “is to say that I’ve been sewing for you since I came to the city.  And—­if you can say anything good——­”

“I’ll do that all right,” Rose affirmed.  She put a heavy silver bag on the bedside table and lowered herself into a chair.  “You leave it to me, dearie.  There ain’t anything I won’t say.”

The ward was watching with intense interest.  Old Maggie, working the creaking bandage machine, was palpitating with excitement.  From her chair by the door she could see the elevator and it was she who announced the coming of destiny.

“Here comes the father,” she confided to the end of the ward.  “Guess the mother couldn’t come.”

It was not the father though.  It was a young man who hesitated in the doorway, hat in hand—­a tall young man, with a strong and not unhandsome face.  The Probationer, rather twitchy from excitement and anxiety, felt her heart stop and race on again.  Jerry, without a doubt!

The meeting was rather constrained.  The girl went whiter than her pillows and half closed her eyes; but Rose, who would have been terrified at the sight of an elderly farmer, was buoyantly relieved and at her ease.