"Aunt Mary, I don't believe she is as old as I am. So young to die! And she is so gentle and lady-like. She says she has no relatives at all to leave him to. Her husband died when Louis was a year old. And I think she said that neither her husband nor herself had brother or sister. Poor little tot! He is literally alone in the world. And the world so big!... Aunt Mary, I think I will have to do it." She rather feared opposition from Judge Kirtley, but somewhat to her surprise he acquiesced in the proposed plan without remonstrance. "Your money is your own and so is your life," he told her. "You are a woman now, accountable to nobody." To Mrs. Pennybacker he said afterwards, "I am far from feeling sure about the outcome of it all. We are doing all we can, but these things are always uncertain. If it should go against her, it will be a good thing for her to have this child." The next visit to the Home decided her. A lady from Chevy Chase had been there looking for a little boy. She had her eye on Louis Lesseur. "I told her," reported the matron, "that we had given the refusal of him to another lady." Margaret's brows came together in a quick frown. This seemed like bargaining for flesh and blood. "If you could make your decision soon--" "I will make it now," she said. "I am ready to take him at any time." But when she got home Mrs. Pennybacker objected strongly to the suddenness of her decision. "Go and see the mother, Margaret, and insist upon a history of the family. Don't think of taking him without that." Caution is stronger at sixty than at twenty-six. "I shall take him whatever the family history is!... Yes, I know it is a responsibility. And so is not taking him. He will soon be a motherless child, and my arms are empty. Aunt Mary," she went on thoughtfully, "I never used to think about these things as I do now, but I cannot see a helpless child these days without my whole heart going out to him. Is it because I am older, or is it Philip?" "It is Philip, Margaret. This is the way God takes to enlarge our sympathies. The true mother heart can take in more than her own.... No, I know it, but all women who have borne children are not true mothers, and sometimes the very essence of maternity bubbles up in the heart of one who has never found a mate.... And there is another thing: When sorrow sits at our fireside and talks with us, it always leaves us with a quicker ear to catch what she has said to others. I doubt if you could comprehend this poor mother's anxieties if you were not yourself acquainted with grief." She smiled to herself an hour later as Margaret drove off to the hospital, eager for the interview that would settle the matter. "For taking her out of herself," she said, "this is almost equal to the whirl of society." * * * * *