The Strange Case of Baby H Read Online Free Page A

left at the side of the house. But it was gone. And, she realized, so was one of the quilts that had been hanging on the line with the sheets. Mother and Father’s large green-and-white diamond quilt was there, but her own soft blue one wasn’t.
    Looters—already? With the yard full of people? Clara looked around at all the lodgers. The Grissingers and the Hansens were talking quietly among themselves. Miss DuBois was urging the children to eat. Miss Chandler was helping Mother refill the bowls of porridge and soup. Old Mr. Granger and the Wheeler sisters sat in the corner by the back fence, on chairs brought from the dining room. From the wild way Mr. Granger was gesturing, Clara knew he was telling a story about his days as a gold miner, long years ago. He told these tales to anyone who would listen, and Clara had listened many times. She was glad he had a new audience.
    But no one had her blue quilt.
    Clara frowned. There was a wind—it had been whipping up the fires all over the city all day—so perhaps the basket had blown out toward the street. But the quilt? She had pegged it firmly onto the washing line before she’d set off for Emmeline’s.
    Clara rounded the house, looking in the bushes for the laundry basket. She walked out to the street, with its broken paving stones. She saw the glow of her neighbors’ small cookfires.
    But no sign of basket or quilt.
    Clara shrugged and headed back to the yard. Then she heard a mewling cry. She stopped and listened. There—it came again—from the steep steps leading to their front door.
    A lost kitten?
    Clara headed for the steps, then stopped. No sign of a kitten—but there, a flash of blue. And—yes—there, set just outside the front door, was the wicker basket with the quilt folded inside.
    How odd! Clara thought.
    There was the mewling cry again, louder this time. Clara sucked in her breath. She leaped up the steps two at a time.
    It wasn’t a kitten, not at all! There in the basket, wrapped snugly in the missing blue quilt, was a red-faced, wide-eyed, soot-smudged little baby.
    â€œOh, gracious!” Clara bent over the basket to read the note pinned to the quilt.
    Please take care of me for I am a poor orffin
    She looked left and right and across the street to see who could have brought the baby. But no one was there.
    Clara lifted the baby into her arms, blue quilt and all. “You’re a fine fellow!” she murmured, turning back one corner of the blanket to reveal the baby’s grimy blue sailor suit topped by a too-large, torn flannel shirt.
    He stared at her. His eyes were dark under his sooty eyebrows and long lashes. He opened his mouth and let out a long, sad wail.
    â€œOh, dear.” She laid him back into the wicker basket, hefted baby and basket together by the wicker handles, and fairly ran into the backyard. “Mother! Father!” she called. “We have another lodger tonight!”
    Father was slicing pieces of day-old cake for Mother to distribute as dessert. They turned to Clara as she hurried up to them.
    â€œOh, good,” said Mother. “You’ve got the laundry down—” Her eyes widened.
    â€œI found him on our doorstep,” Clara explained. “Mother, someone just left him there!” She handed her mother the note. “Left him all alone!”
    The two young mothers held out their hands, but Mother lifted the baby out of the basket and cradled him against her shoulder. “What a precious little lad. About five or six months old, I should guess. Wouldn’t you agree, ladies?”
    The other women nodded. The men looked bemused.
    â€œI do declare,” Mother exclaimed. “He is the very image of our Gideon at the same age, don’t you think so, Frederick? No hair to speak of—and look at those dark eyebrows!” She handed him down to Father in his wheelchair. Father frowned at the bundle in his lap and patted it