“And my sister’s too,” I answered. “And if the question lies between keeping a big, burly brother like you, and a tiny, wee sister like that, I venture to choose for myself.” “She ought to go to the workhouse,” said the magistrate--a friendly, good-natured man enough in ordinary--and rising, he took his hat and departed. This man had no children. So he was--or was not, so much to blame. Which? _I_ say the latter. Some of Ethelwyn’s friends were no less positive about her duty in the affair. I happened to go into the drawing-room during the visit of one of them--Miss Bowdler. “But, my dear Mrs. Walton,” she was saying, “you’ll be having all the tramps in England leaving their babies at your door.” “The better for the babies,” interposed I, laughing. “But you don’t think of your wife, Mr. Walton.” “Don’t I? I thought I did,” I returned dryly. “Depend upon it, you’ll repent it.” “I hope I shall never repent of anything but what is bad.” “Ah! but, really! it’s not a thing to be made game of.” “Certainly not. The baby shall be treated with all due respect in this house.” “What a provoking man you are! You know what I mean well enough.” “As well as I choose to know--certainly,” I answered. This lady was one of my oldest parishioners, and took liberties for which she had no other justification, except indeed an unhesitating belief in the superior rectitude of whatever came into her own head can be counted as one. When she was gone, my wife turned to me with a half-comic, half-anxious look, and said: “But it would be rather alarming, Harry, if this were to get abroad, and we couldn’t go out at the door in the morning without being in danger of stepping on a baby on the door-step.” “You might as well have said, when you were going to be married, ‘If God should send me twenty children, whatever should I do?’ He who sent us this one can surely prevent any more from coming than he wants to come. All that we have to think of is to do right--not the consequences of doing right. But leaving all that aside, you must not suppose that wandering mothers have not even the attachment of animals to their offspring. There are not so many that are willing to part with babies as all that would come to. If you believe that God sent this one, that is enough for the present. If he should send another, we should know by that that we had to take it in.”