"I don't know, but she cried and I thought somethin' might be hurtin' her or she wasn't covered up warm enough--and I wanted to touch her again--and--and--" "But if you feel that way, how could you leave her?" "What was I to do with her? I couldn't take her back home. I come from the country and I couldn't go back with a baby. No one would speak to me, and it would hurt Mother so. I jest _couldn't_. She's only two weeks old, and you know when you leave the hospital with a baby two weeks old in your arms, and you can't go home and you've no money, what are you goin' to do?" And she turned the tear-stained, questioning face of a child up to the Judge. "What were you going to do if the baby was taken in?" "I'd have tried to get work somewhere, but you can't get work with a baby." "Have you no friends?" "No; only some girls in the store where I worked." "How did you come to leave the baby where you did?" "A girl in the hospital read in a paper about an old lady who had no children and who took a baby left on her doorstep, and so I left mine, thinking that if she saw her once, she is so pretty that she'd _have_ to love her, and she'd have a chance to grow up like other girls. And I'd 'a' gone to work feeling that my baby had a home which I knowed I couldn't give her." "But why didn't you go to some of the homes that are open to girls like you?" "Homes? I didn't know of any." "There are many institutions that would have helped you. Didn't any one tell you about them?" "No; I wouldn't talk much with people. I was afraid that they'd send word to Mother, and I didn't want her to know and feel bad, so I didn't talk about myself. It's been awful hard--" and the babyish lips began to tremble. "Do you want to keep the baby?" The girl's face brightened. "Do I want to--do I _want_ to--But I can't! They tell me there's no place for a girl with a baby." "Will you work?" "Oh, Judge," and she drew the baby closer to her, "jest give me a chance! I'll work my fingers off for her. She's all I've got now, and--I'm--I'm--_so_ lonely." The Judge started to say something, but he was interrupted by a little old lady rising from one of the seats. "Judge, jest you give me that girl and the baby. I'll take her." The Judge looked over his glasses at the excited, flushed face of the old lady in front of him. "What's that?" "I said, jest you give me that girl and the baby, and I'll take her. I'll take her right home with me." The Judge looked at her a moment in silence; then the young man beside the lady came forward and said: "May I speak with you a moment, Judge Carlow?" There was a whispered conference between the Judge, Dr. Eaton, and the kindly-faced, white-haired probation officer, and then the Judge turned to the young girl. "Discharged in care of Miss Drusilla Doane," he said.