Two soft arms stole around Mrs. Moore's neck. "I'm going to have you for my mother," Marian explained, "and I'm going to live here always. I don't want to be gived away." CHAPTER III SHE GOES TO CHURCH JANEY CLARK was taken ill one day and was carried to the hospital. When she returned months afterward, she had something to tell Marian. "You want to get yourself adopted," was her advice. "I'm going to, first chance I get. When I was too well to stay in the hospital and not enough well to come home, a pretty lady came and said would I like to go to her house and stay until I was all better." "Did she 'dopt you?" questioned Marian. "No, of course not, or I could have stayed at her house and she would be my mother. She didn't want to keep me but only to borrow me so the children she is aunt to would know about Little Pilgrims and how lucky it is not to be one their own selves. And at her house," continued Janey, "if you liked something they had for dinner pretty well, you could have a second helping, if you would say please. You better believe I said it when there was ice cream. And the children she was aunt to took turns dividing chocolate candy with me, and the only trouble was they gave me too much and made me sick most all the time. What do you think! One day a girl said she wished I was a little cripple like a boy that was there once, because she liked to be kind to little cripples and wash their faces. Wasn't she just lovely? Oh, Marian, I want to be adopted and have a mother like that lady and a room all my own and everything." "But I would rather live with Mrs. Moore," objected Marian. "I've picked her out for my mother." "All right for you, stay here if you want to," agreed Janey, "but I'm not, you just wait and see." Janey Clark was adopted soon after and when Marian was invited to visit her, she changed her mind about living forever in the Home for Little Pilgrims. Mrs. Moore promised to choose a mother for her from the many visitors to the Home, yet she and Marian proved hard to suit. "I want a mother just like my Nanna," said Marian to the superintendent, who agreed to do all he could to find one. In spite of his help Marian seemed likely to stay in the Home, not because no one wanted her but because the child objected to the mothers who offered themselves. All these months the little girl was so happy and contented the superintendent said she was like a sunbeam among the Little Pilgrims and if the school-teacher had some ideas that he and Mrs. Moore didn't share, she smiled and said nothing.