Our Mutual Girl, No. 35 (1914)

Before Margaret left town to visit the John Hays Hammonds at Lookout Hill, the famous estate in Gloucester. Mass., she determined to get some toys for Baby Lily. She took counsel of Jean Parke, her very good friend, who had been Our Mutual Girl's sponsor in New York artistic and literary circles, and Miss Parke suggested that Margaret visit Rose O'Neill, creator of the famous Kewpies. So Our Mutual Girl and Miss Parke motored to Miss O'Neill's studios. Miss O'Neill, artist, painter, and author, drew Kewpie pictures for Margaret and, when she learned that Our Mutual Girl intended to buy some Kewpies for Baby Lily, insisted that Margaret accept as gifts a number of the handsomest and cutest of these sprites. Having seen the little foundling safe with her old nurse, Sally. Margaret felt free to go to Gloucester. There "Jack" Hammond, inventor of the method of steering ships by wireless, not alone showed Our Mutual Girl how he maneuvered a huge vessel about the harbor, though the ship did not have a soul aboard her, but he treated Margaret with a view of his latest invention, an electrical dog that hopped and played about as lively as if it were a real dog. Our Mutual Girl, ever adventurous, determined that she would go out early one morning with the fishing fleet. Her friends tried to dissuade her, saying that the trip would be nasty and dirty and smelly. But Margaret became only the more enamored of the idea. So one morning she quietly left her hostess' estate, slipped to the wharves, and soon was aboard an old fishing smack. For several hours, and it was all before eight o'clock in the morning, too, the fleet stood back and forth, now throwing out its nets, now visiting the lobster pots. An old, weather-beaten sailor taught Margaret how to hold a live and very bitey lobster so that its claws couldn't invade Our Mutual Girl's soft hands. But Margaret quickly gave up the idea of playing with lobsters when she found aboard the fishing smack a tiny kitten, the pet of the captain. When Margaret returned she had a lengthy talk about the future of Baby Lily and it was suggested that Margaret visit a Mrs. Rogers, a very wealthy and childless widow who wanted to adopt a little girl. Our Mutual girl adopted the suggestion reluctantly, because she wanted to keep Baby Lily for herself, and she became more determined to do so when she found that Mrs. Rogers' idea of a baby girl was about the same as of her toy dog. So Margaret left Gloucester for Newport with the question of the baby's future still unsettled.