"I like you, Dr. Eaton. I like you more and more; and I see you understand how I feel. Here I am, an old woman all alone in this big house, with nothin' to do, and a lot of pesky servants that stand around and don't earn their salt, jest a-waitin' on me. I've always wanted babies, but never had a chance to have 'em, and I've jest spent my heart lovin' other people's, and seein' 'em in other people's arms and mine empty. Now I git a chance to have a baby most my own and I ain't goin' to lose it." The doctor looked at her face for a few moments in silence, and beneath the lines he saw the loneliness of the heart-hungry little old woman and he understood. "You are perfectly right, Miss Doane. There's nothing like a baby in all the world. It'll give you something to do and think about and it'll bring sunshine into the house. I envy you. Every time I go down to the 'home' where I look after the health of some kiddies, I wish I could bundle every one of them up and take them to a real home with me." "That's what Mr. Thornton wanted me to do with it--put it in a home. I've lived in a home, Dr. Eaton, and though I wasn't treated bad and had all the comforts of four walls and enough to eat, such as it was, it ain't a place to die in, and it sure ain't a place to grow up in." "You're right again, Miss Doane. The kiddies up at our place get a bed and clothes and plenty of food; but there's something they don't get and that something is going to count in their life. They grow up without love, and are turned out on the world just little machines that have been taught that the world goes round at the tap of a bell. They've missed something that they can never get, and if they win out in life it's because they've got something pretty big inside of them which they've had to fight for all by themselves. And any fight is hard when it is made alone without a little tenderness to help over the hard places. Why, when I see the girls all in checked aprons, hair braided in two braids tied with a blue cord, all the boys in blue with hats just exactly alike with blue bands on them--all going to dinner at a regular time--all eating oatmeal out of a blue bowl, all just part of a thing that turns babies into a lot of little jelly-molds like a hundred other little jelly-molds--well, Miss Doane, it hurts something way deep inside of me. Keep the baby, Miss Doane, for your own sake and for the baby's." "I'm glad you see it my way. I'd made up my mind already, but you make it easier for me. I wonder that I'll do with it at first?" "Why don't you let the gardener's wife keep it until you can find out what you really want to do. You can pay her and she'll be glad to earn the extra money. It won't cost much."