"I don’t know, Alicia, but when he comes back I suppose we’ll have to accept that version. Dibdin will have some advice on that point, I feel sure." Alicia remained silent for a time lost in reflection. Her child’s face in her perturbation was the face of a grown woman. "Do you think he’ll want to take back the children, Uncle Ranny?" "That’s the crux of the whole matter, Alicia. I don’t know. But if he does, he’ll have a right to do so, of course; they are his." "Oh, oh!" and her hands flew up to her face in a gesture of poignant despair. "Turn them over to such a man! Is that the way the world’s arranged?" I smiled gloomily. I saw that there was no need of comment upon the arrangement of the world. This girl young in her teens understood it as well as any one. "Then I’d have to go, too," she uttered hoarsely with a dry sob of bitterness in her throat. "Not necessarily," I interposed. "Oh, yes, I should," she insisted doggedly, as though driving something painful into her flesh. "But it doesn’t matter about me. But, Uncle Ranny, you won’t—you can’t give them up! They’re all so happy here. Little Jimmie and Laura and Randolph! What chance would they have of growing up fine—away from you—-with a man like that? You won’t let them go—you won’t, you won’t! Oh, it would be horrible, horrible!" she ended passionately. "Listen, my dear," I tried to calm her. "I had no wish to harrow your feelings. I told you because you love the children—and we must face all this together. I shall want your help, your support." She flashed a sweet look mingled of pride and gratitude. "After all you—have been through," she murmured incoherently. "But why don’t you do this, Uncle Ranny!" and with the quick transition possible to youth, she was again alive, eager, excited, this little fellow conspirator of mine. "Why don’t you let him come here and live right in this house for a while? We’ll be awfully crowded," she ran on with flushed energy, "but we’ll find room for him. And let’s be awfully nice to him—and believe everything he says. Then we could watch him, and I just know we’ll find out whether he’s all right or not!" I laughed at her enthusiasm. "You forget, Alicia," I informed her, "that even if he shouldn’t prove all right, he is still the father of those children." "I don’t care," she returned stoutly. "If he’s bad and sees that we see he’s bad, he wouldn’t have the face to take them away from here. Even a bad father wants his children to be all right!" "And how in the world do you know that, you astounding infant?" "Oh, I know!" with a triumphant laugh, "At the Home—some fathers brought their children and cried—one of them did—because he was so bad he didn’t think he was fit to have a child near him. I had tiptoed into the matron’s office, and I heard him!" "Perhaps he didn’t want to support the brat," I scoffed to cover up my wonder.