"Do you desire her to abide under your roof after what you have learned?"
"Why, Grismer, I'd travel all the way to hell to get her now, if any of your creed had managed to send her there. Come; I've seen the child. It may be a risk, as you say. In fact, it can't help being a risk, Grismer. But I want her. May I have her?"
"M-m-m " he touched a bell and a clerk appeared. Then he turned to Cleland. "Would you be good enough to see our Mr. Bunce? I thank you. Good afternoon! I am happy to have conversed again with my old friend, John Cleland, m-m-m'yes, my friend of many years."
An hour later John Cleland left "our" Mr. Bunce, armed with proper authority to begin necessary legal proceedings.
Talking it over with Brinton, his attorney, that evening, he related the amazing conversation between himself and Chiltern Grismer.
Brinton laughed:
"It isn't religious bigotry; it's just stinginess. Grismer is the meanest man on Manhattan Island. Didn't you know it?"
"No. I don't know him well though I've been acquainted with him for a long while. But I don't see how he can be stingy."
"Why?"
"Well, he's interested in charity "
"He's paid a thumping big salary! He makes money out of charity. Why shouldn't he be interested?"
"But he publishes religious books "
"Of course. They sell. It's a great graft, Cleland. Don't publish novels if you want to make money; print Bibles!"
"Is that a fact?"
"You bet! There are more parasites in pulpit, publishing house and charity concerns, who live exclusively by exploiting God, than there were unpleasant afflictions upon the epidermis of our late friend, Job. And Chiltern Grismer is one of them the old skinflint! hogging his only sister's share of the Grismer money and scared stiff for fear some descendant might reopen the claim and fight the verdict which beggared his own sister!"
"By Gad!" exclaimed Cleland, very red; "I've a mind to look into it and start proceedings again if there is any ground "
"You can't."
"Why?"
"Not if you adopt this child."
"Not in her behalf?"
"Your motives would be uncharitably suspected, Cleland. You can give her enough. Besides, you don't want to stir up anything rattle any skeletons for this little girl's sake."
"No, of course not. You're quite right, Brinton. No money could compensate her. And, as you say, I am able to provide for her amply."
"Besides," said Brinton, "there's the paternal aunt, Miss Rosalinda Quest. She's as rich as mud. It may be that she'll do something for the child."
"I don't want her to," exclaimed Cleland angrily. "If she'll make no objection to my taking the girl, she can keep her money and leave it to the niggers of Senegambia when she dies, for all I care! Fix it for me, Brinton."
"You'd better go down to Bayport and interview her yourself," said the lawyer. "And, by the way, I hear she's a queer one something of a bird, in fact."
"Bird?"
"Well, a vixen. They say so. All the same, she's doing a lot of real good with her money."
"How do you mean?"
"She's established a sort of home for the offspring of vicious and degenerate parents. It's really quite a wonderful combination of clinic and training school where suspected or plainly defective children are brought to be taught and to remain under observation really a finely conceived charity, I understand. Why not call on her?"
"Very well," said Cleland, reluctantly, not caring very much about encountering "vixens" and "birds" of the female persuasion.
Except for this paternal aunt and the Grismers, there turned out to be no living human being related to the child Stephanie.
Once assured of this, John Cleland undertook the journey to Bayport, running down in his car one morning, and determined that a combination of mild dignity and gallant urbanity should conquer any untoward symptoms which this "bird" might develop.
When he arrived at the entrance to the place, a nurse on duty gave him proper directions how to find Miss Quest, who was out about the grounds somewhere.
He found her at last, in nurse's garb, marching up and down the gravel paths of the "Common Sense Home for Defectives," as the institution was called.
She was pruning privet hedges. She had a grim face, a belligerent eye, and she stood clicking her pruning shears aggressively as he approached, hat in hand.
"Miss Quest, I presume?" he inquired.
"I'm called Sister Rose," she answered shortly.
"By any other name " began Cleland, gallantly, but checked himself, silenced by the hostility in her snapping black eyes.
"What do you wish?" she demanded impatiently.
Cleland, very red, swallowed his irritation:
"I came here in regard to your niece "
"Niece? I haven't any!"
"I beg your pardon; I mean your great-niece "
"What do you mean? I haven't any that I know of."
"Her name is Stephanie Quest."
"Harry Quest's child? Has he really got a baby? I thought he was lying! He's such a liar how was I to know that he has a baby?"
"You didn't know it, then?"
"No. He wrote about a child. Of course, I supposed he was lying. That was before I went abroad."
"You've been abroad?"
"I have."
"Long?"
"Several years."
"How long since you've heard from Harry Quest?"
"Several years a dozen, maybe. I suppose he's living on what I settled on him. If he needed money I'd hear from him soon enough."
"He doesn't need money, now. He doesn't need anything more from anybody. But his little daughter does."
"Is Harry dead?" she asked sharply.
"Very."
"And that hussy he married "
"Equally defunct. I believe it was suicide."
"How very nasty!"
"Or," continued Cleland, "it may have been suicide and murder."
"Nastier still!" She turned sharply aside and stood clicking her shears furiously. After a silence: "I'll take the baby," she said in an altered voice.
"She's eleven years old."
"I forgot. I'll take her anyway. She's probably a defective "
"She is not!" retorted Cleland so sharply that Sister Rose turned on him in astonishment.
"Madame," he said, "I want a little child to bring up. I have chosen this one. I possess a comfortable fortune. I offer to bring her up with every advantage, educate her, consider her as my own child, and settle upon her for life a sum adequate for her maintenance. I have the leisure, the inclination, the means to do these things. But you, Madame, are too busy to give this child the intimate personal attention that all children require "
"How do you know I am?"
"Because your time is already dedicated, in a larger sense, to those unhappy children who need you more than she does.
"Because your life is already consecrated to this noble charity of which you are founder and director. A world of unfortunates is dependent on you. If, therefore, I offer to lighten your burden by relieving you of one responsibility, you could not logically decline or disregard my appeal to your reason " His voice altered and became lower: "And, Madame, I already love the child, as though she were my own."
After a long silence Sister Rose said:
"It isn't anything you've advanced that influences me. It's my failure with Harry. Do you think it hasn't cut me to the the soul?" she demanded fiercely, flinging the handful of clipped twigs onto the gravel. "Do you think I am heartless because I said his end was a nasty one! It was! Let God judge me. I did my best."
Cleland remained silent.
"As a matter of fact, I don't care what you think," she added. "What concerns me is that, possibly probably, this child would be better off with you You're the John Cleland, I presume."