nd of stuck up when she called you
that!"

"Most mothers do feel kind of stuck up over their first babies, Susan."

She considered this, and nodded assent, "But it's silly of them,
anyway," she announced. "There are so many babies all the time,
everywhere. There's nothing new about babies, Ambo."

"Aha!" I exclaimed. "You knew from the first how to chasten my stuck-up
name, didn't you? 'Ambo' is a delightful improvement."

"It's more like you," said Susan, tightening her fingers briefly on
mine.

And presently she closed her eyes. When, after a long still interval,
she opened them, they were cypress-shaded pools.

"Tell me what happened, Ambo."

"He's dead, Susan. Pearl's dead, too."

She closed her eyes again, and two big tears slipped out from between
her lids, wetting her thick eyelashes and staining her bruised and her
pallid cheek.

"He couldn't help it. He was made like that, inside. He was no damn
good, Ambo. That's what he was always saying to Pearl--'You're no damn
good.' She wasn't, either. And he wasn't, much. I guess it's better for
him and Pearl to _be_ dead."

This--and the two big tears--was her good-by to Bob, to Pearl, to the
four-room house; her good-by to Birch Street. It shocked me at the time.
I released her hand and stood up to light a cigarette--staring the while
at Susan. Where had she found her precocious brains? And had she no
heart? Had something of Bob's granitic harshness entered into this
uncanny, this unnatural child? Should I live to regret my decision to
care for her, to educate her? When I died, would she say--to whom?--"I
guess it's better for him to _be_ dead. Poor Ambo! He was no damn good."

But even as I shuddered, I smiled. For, after all, she was right; the
child was right. She had merely uttered, truthfully, thoughts which a
more conventional mind, more conventionally disciplined, would have
known how to conceal--yes, to conceal even from itself. Genius was very
like that.

"Susan!" I suddenly demanded. "Have you any relatives who will try to
claim you?"

"Claim me?"

"Yes. Want to take care of you?"

"Mamma's sister-in-law lives in Hoboken," said Susan. "But she's a
widow; and she's got seven already."

"Would you like to stay here with me?"

For all answer she flopped sidelong down from the pillows and hid her
bruised face in the counterpane. Her slight, canary-clad shoulders were
shaken with stifled weeping.

"That settles it!" I affirmed. "I'll see m