leave you and the dear, nice doctor, but I'm
afraid I don't want to go back to the babies and Jack. I'm tired of
them, and I feel as if it was foolish to be funny when there are so
many sweet things to think of and books to read and your beautiful
music. But I must go away from all that, and somehow heaven looks
nicer. And when you die doesn't an angel come and take you in his arms
and just carry you up and up to the other side of the sky where
everything is peace and loveliness, and no one will torment you----"

"Oh my child, perhaps God wants you to live here a little longer and
do some work for him. The doctor would be very sorry not to have you
get well. Some one might say--'He let that little girl die when he
might have saved her,' but they wouldn't know it was because she kept
brooding over it all the time and would make no effort to get well.
God knows what is best for us."

"I didn't mind about going back. But today it seemed to be--dreadful,"
with a convulsive sob.

"Then we have spoiled you. Oh, I am sorry for that."

"Oh, dear Miss Armitage, don't be sorry when you have been so good.
But I don't quite understand how anyone can bind you out and make you
stay years if you didn't want to."

"But children do not know what is best for them. Some go wandering
round the streets without any home and are picked up and put in a
place almost like a prison where they have to work whether they like
it or not. And some even have cruel fathers and mothers. You said the
Bordens were good to you. Would you rather be there or at the Home?"

"Oh, I'd rather be there than at the Home, but----" and she swallowed
hard over a sob.

"If they worked you beyond reason or half starved you a complaint
could be made but they all seem to love you----"

Miss Armitage smiled with a soft kind of sadness, as if she wished the
truth were not quite so true, and the things that looked so delightful
were not so often the thing it was best to give up for honor's sake.

"Yes, they do love me, babies and all, and of course I must go back
when I am well enough."

Then she turned her face away and tried to keep back the tears. Jane
entered at that moment and the tension was broken.

Miss Armitage read verses to her after she was in bed that evening,
and kissed her good night with motherly tenderness. Then she sat for
some time and thought.

Why should she have taken a fancy to this little girl? She had seen
prettier children who were ho