"So do I," agreed Mrs. Bateson; "I'd never have adopted a child myself. I should always have been expecting to see its parents' faults coming out in it--so different from the peace you have with your own flesh and blood." Mrs. Hankey groaned. "Your own flesh and blood may take after their father; you never can tell." "So they may, Mrs. Hankey--so they may; but, as the Scripture says, it is our duty to whip the old man out of them." "Just so. And that's another thing against adopted children--you'd hesitate about punishing them enough; I don't fancy as you'd ever feel the same pleasure in whipping 'em as you do in whipping your own. You'd feel you ought to be polite-like, as if they was sort of visitors." "My children always took after my side of the house, I'm thankful to say," said Mrs. Bateson; "so I hadn't much trouble with them." "I wish I could say as much; I do, indeed. But the Lord saw fit to try me by making my son Peter the very moral of his father; as like as two peas they are. And when you find one poor woman with such a double portion, you are tempted to doubt the workings of Providence." Mrs. Bateson looked sympathetic. "That's bad for you, Mrs. Hankey!" "It is so; but I take up my cross and don't complain. You know what a feeble creature Hankey is--never doing the right thing; and, when he does, doing it at the wrong time; well, Peter is just such another. Only the other day he was travelling by rail, and what must he do but get an attack of the toothache? Those helpless sort of folks are always having the toothache, if you notice." "So they are." "Peter's toothache was so bad that he must needs take a dose of some sleeping-stuff or other--I forget the name--and fell so sound asleep that he never woke at the station, but was put away with the carriage into a siding. Fast asleep he was, with his handkerchief over his face to keep the sun off, and never heard the train shunted, nor nothing." "Well, to be sure! Them sleeping-draughts are wonderful soothing, as I've heard tell, but I never took one on 'em. The Lord giveth His beloved sleep, and His givings are enough for them as are in health; but them as are in pain want something a bit stronger, doubtless." "So it appears," agreed Mrs. Hankey. "Well, there lay Peter fast asleep in the siding, with his handkerchief over his face. And one of the porters happens to come by, and sees him, and jumps to the conclusion that there's been a murder in the train, and that our Peter is the corpse. So off he goes to the station-master and tells him as there's a murdered body in one of the carriages in the siding; and the station-master's as put out as never was." Mrs. Bateson's eyes and mouth opened wide in amazement and interest. "What a tale, to be sure!"