ed
chortle while I get a few facts out of Beulah. I did most of my voting
on this proposition by proxy, while I was having the measles in
quarantine. Beulah, did I understand you to say you got hold of your
victim through Mrs. O'Farrel, your seamstress?"

"Yes, when we decided we'd do this, we thought we'd get a child about
six. We couldn't have her any younger, because there would be bottles,
and expert feeding, and well, you know, all those things. We couldn't
have done it, especially the boys. We thought six would be just about
the right age, but we simply couldn't find a child that would do. We
had to know about its antecedents. We looked through the orphan
asylums, but there wasn't anything pure-blooded American that we could
be sure of. We were all agreed that we wanted pure American blood. I
knew Mrs. O'Farrel had relatives on Cape Cod. You know what that stock
is, a good sea-faring strain, and a race of wonderfully fine women,
'atavistic aristocrats' I remember an author in the _Atlantic Monthly_
called them once. I suppose you think it's funny to groan, Gertrude,
when anybody makes a literary allusion, but it isn't. Well, anyway,
Mrs. O'Farrel knew about this child, and sent for her. She stayed with
Mrs. O'Farrel over Sunday, and now David is bringing her here. She'll
be here in a minute."

"Why David?" Gertrude twinkled.

"Why not David?" Beulah retorted. "It will be a good experience for
him, besides David is so amusing when he tries to be, I thought he
could divert her on the way."

"It isn't such a crazy idea, after all, Gertrude." Margaret Hutchinson
was the youngest of the three, being within several months of her
majority, but she looked older. Her face had that look of wisdom that
comes to the young who have suffered physical pain. "We've got to do
something. We're all too full of energy and spirits, at least the rest
of you are, and I'm getting huskier every minute, to twirl our hands
and do nothing. None of us ever wants to be married,--that's settled;
but we do want to be useful. We're a united group of the closest kind
of friends, bound by the ties of--of--natural selection, and we need a
purpose in life. Gertrude's a real artist, but the rest of us are not,
and--and--"

"What could be more natural for us than to want the living clay to
work on? That's the idea, isn't it?" Gertrude said. "I can be serious
if I want to, Beulah-land, but, honestly, girls, when I come to face
out the proposition