"You see," confessed Bettie, flushing guiltily, "we kept the door locked. Whenever we saw anybody coming we whisked Rosa Marie into the spare-room closet." "If Rosa Marie had been an ordinary child," explained Jean, "she would probably have howled; but you see, every blessed thing about us was so new and strange to her that she just thought that everything we did was all right. And anyhow, she doesn't have the same sort of feelings that Anne Halliday does. Anne would have cried." "You naughty, naughty children," scolded Mrs. Mapes, "to keep a secret like that for five whole weeks." "But, Mother," protested Jean, gently, "we never supposed it was going to be a five-weeks-long secret. We didn't _want_ it to be. We've been expecting her horrid mother to turn up every single minute since Rosa Marie came." "It was all my fault," declared loyal Mabel. "_They'd_ have told, the very first minute, if it hadn't been for me. Blame me for everything." "What," asked Mrs. Bennett, "do you intend to do with that--that atrocious child?" "She _isn't_ atrocious!" blazed Mabel, with sudden fire. "She's a perfect darling, when you get used to her, and I _love_ her. She isn't so very pretty, I know, but she's just dear. She's good, and that--and that's--Why! You've said, yourself, that it was better to be good than beautiful." "But what do you intend to do with her?" persisted Mrs. Bennett. "Keep her," said Mabel, firmly. "She doesn't eat anything much but milk and sample packages." "You can't. I won't have her in my house. Why! Her parents are probably dreadful people." "That's why she ought to have me for a mother and you for a grandmother," pleaded Mabel, earnestly. "But if you don't like her, I'll keep her here." "But you can't, Mabel. It's so cold that there ought to be a fire here this minute, and you can't possibly leave a child alone with a fire." "Couldn't _you_ take her, Mrs. Mapes?" pleaded Mabel. "No, I'm afraid I couldn't. If she were the least bit lovable----" "Oh, she _is_----" "Not to me," returned Mrs. Mapes, firmly. "Wouldn't _you_ take her, Mrs. Tucker?" "What! With all the family I have now? I couldn't think of such a thing." "Then you," begged Mabel, turning to Aunty Jane. "There's only you and Marjory in that great big house. Oh, _do_ take her." "Mercy! I'd just as soon undertake to board a live bear! Why! Nobody wants a child of _that_ sort around. She's as homely----" "I'm extremely glad," said Mabel, with much dignity and a great deal of emphasis, "that _my_ child doesn't understand grown-up English." "Perhaps," said Mrs. Mapes, smiling with sympathetic understanding, "we four older people had better talk this matter over by ourselves. Suppose you walk home with me. "_I_ think," said Aunty Jane, forgetting all about the saucepan that had led her to the Cottage, "that the orphan asylum is the place for that unspeakable child." "Yes," agreed Mrs. Bennett, "she'll certainly have to go to the asylum." CHAPTER VIII