A Pair of Cupids

An aging Manhattan patriarch, Henry Burgess, orchestrates a comic-baroque experiment in affection: he commandeers twin foundlings from a washerwoman’s washtub and deposits them like Trojan horses on the marble doorsteps of two emotional recluses—Virginia Parke, a porcelain heiress who dotes on her pom-pommed poodle Frou-Frou more than on any biped, and Peter Warburton, a ledger-enslaved magnate whose heart beats only in quarterly increments. The infants, smelling of soap flakes and possibility, detonate the adults’ routines: silk parlor becomes nursery, ticker-tape office becomes cradle. Courtship emerges through lullabies and mashed-pea philosophies; love is measured in diaper pins and the precise angle of a nursery-rhyme hum. Just as the mismatched pair prepare to sign a lifetime merger, the twins vanish—snatched by their ne’er-do-well father who covets the $25,000 safety bond posted by the manipulative uncle. A chase through tenement shadows and moonlit wharfs restores the babies to their rightful washerwoman and, more crucially, restores Peter and Virginia to one another—now eager to manufacture heirs of their own, no subterfuge required.