.
Yearly subscriptions will have to be solicited and the more publicity
we get the better."

"I'll be chief detective for the society," laughed Josie, shaking out
another napkin. "You may think that is a joke, but I tell you there are
more shady mix-ups in a concern like that than in courts of law. I'll
bet I'll be called on to trace parentage and establish property rights
and relationships before the year is up."

"Nobody could do it better," smiled Mary Louise. "Now I am going to
stop in and have a little talk with Uncle Peter Conant at his office
and then I'm going around and tell dear old Dr. Weston that as far as I
am concerned he can move his Children's Home to the Hathaway house
tomorrow. That is, if Uncle Peter doesn't object." Josie offered to
meet her at the Children's Home and Mary Louise gladly accepted.

Uncle Peter didn't object. To the contrary he seemed vastly pleased
with the prospect of some young neighbors.

"'Twill do Hannah good and no doubt she will turn our house into a kind
of annex. Go ahead, my dear, and invest your money in something where
moth and rust will not corrupt and where thieves will not break through
and steal."

"Oh, Uncle Peter, I am so glad to hear you say that. I haven't any
blood kin to go to for advice and Danny always says for me to do
exactly what I want to do, which is bad for my character. It might make
me very conceited to have him always insist that I'm right just because
I want to do something."

"Well, well! The young rascal is right," laughed Mr. Conant.

"But do you think Grandpa Jim would approve of what I am doing?"

"Surely he would. I haven't a doubt if you had not been in existence he
would have done much the same sort of thing with his fortune. Jim
Hathaway was a powerful charitable man."

Mary Louise then went to see Dr. Weston at his office in the dingy
little building that housed the Children's Home Society. The old man
slept on a bumpy couch in the corner of his office. He had been
assigned a bedroom in the house, but the association had grown beyond
its quarters and the devoted doctor had long ago given up his room as
an overflow dormitory for the constantly increasing number of little
children who were sent to the home to be kept there until some kind
person saw fit to adopt them.

Dr. Weston's life had been dedicated to social work and now in his old
age the thing which interested him most and to which he gave all his
strength and time was th