“The policeman at the railroad station says she mumbled a name something like ‘Washington’; but he isn’t quite sure about that,” Mr. Bobbsey reported.
“Then we could call the baby May Washington,” mused Nan.
“Yes, we could,” her mother said. “Is that all the police found out?” she inquired of her husband.
“That is all,” he said. “They are going to try, however, to find the strange old lady and ask her why she deserted the baby. But we’ll have to wait.”
“And you children will have to go to school!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, glancing at the clock.
“But you’ll keep Baby May Washington until we come home, won’t you, Mother?” pleaded Nan.
“I’ll see,” murmured Mrs. Bobbsey, as the twins hurried on to school, and Freddie said to Bert:
“I’d like her better if she was a boy baby.”
“Well, Richard, what do you think of the latest member of the family?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.
Mr. Bobbsey did not finish what he started to say. He and his wife were bending over and looking at the sleeping baby—May Washington, as she had been hastily named. The Bobbsey twins had gone to school and the house was quiet—just the place for a sleeping baby.
“I can’t understand how any mother would leave such a little, helpless baby like this out in a storm all night,” went on Mr. Bobbsey, as he prepared to go down to his lumberyard.
“Perhaps it wasn’t the mother,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Certainly that woman seemed too old to be the mother of a little baby like this.”
“I don’t believe she was the mother,” declared Mr. Bobbsey, looking for his hat.
“I don’t know what to think. I’ll have another talk with the police to-day. You can’t do very much over the telephone, but I wanted to satisfy the children a little. Yes, I’ll inquire further.”
“And what will we do with her—with Baby May, I mean—if the police can’t find out to whom she belongs?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.
“Well—” Mr. Bobbsey turned his hat around several times and looked inside it as if, there, he might find an answer to the puzzling riddle.
“Well?” asked his wife, with a smile, as she waited.
“Um! Well, if we can’t find out where she belongs, I suppose the police will have to take her, and—”
“The police!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, and then she clapped her hand over her mouth, for she had, in her excitement, spoken so loudly that she was afraid of waking the infant. “Why, Richard Bobbsey!” she went on in a whisper, “you wouldn’t turn a helpless little baby like May over to a lot of men police, would you?”