ther direction."

"Please let us cease talking personalities. Why don't you admire and
talk about this lovely boy? Wouldn't you like to have us adopt him at
Oaklands, Mr. Winthrop?"

"I expect you will not be quite satisfied until you get the position of
matron in some huge asylum for widows and orphans, with a few widowers
thrown in for variety."

"I should enjoy such a position, I believe. It never occurred to me
before. Only think! Gathering up little bits of motherless humanity
like this, and training them into noble men and women. They would go on
perpetuating my work long after my eyes were sleeping under the daisies.
Why that would be next thing to the immortality most of us long for."

"Do you really think you would like such a career?"

"Yes, really. If you would only help me to begin now, in a small way at
first, and build a pretty cottage in one of the Glens around Oaklands."

"Have you no higher ambition than to take care of children?"

"But what could be higher, at least within my reach? I am not clever
enough to write books--at least not good ones, and there are too many
fifth and sixth rate ones now in the market. My painting and music won't
ever amount to anything more than my book-writing could do; so what
remains for me but to try and make the world the better for having lived
in it? And the only way any of us can do that is to work for human
beings."

I was in such real earnest, I forgot for the time Mr. Winthrop's possible
sarcasm.

"You are not very moderate in your demands. Possibly I would be permitted
to share in the posthumous honors you mention, which would be some
recompense for the outlay. Of course, I would be called on to feed and
clothe, as well as shelter, your motley crowd."

"I forgot about that. Would it cost very much?"

"The expense would depend largely on the numbers you received, and it
might not be safe to trust to your discretion in limiting the number.
Your sympathies would be so wrought on, Oaklands would soon swarm with
blear-eyed specimens of humanity, and Mrs. Flaxman and I would be
compelled to seek some other shelter."

"If I were only rich myself," I said, with a hopeless sigh.

"You would very soon be poor," Mrs. Flaxman interjected, turning to Mr.
Winthrop. "I could scarcely restrain her from buying one of the most
expensive pieces of broadcloth for her blind friend."

"He may never have had a genuine suit of West of England broadcloth in
his life, and