e in which it lies. It cost fifteen
dollars; and the clothes--what they cost would keep a family half a
year. I have no rights, is it?--I who stepped in and took the child
without question, without bein' asked, and made it my own, and treated
it as if it was me own. No, by the love of God, I treated it far, far
better than if it had been me own. Because a child was denied me, the
hunger of the years made me love the child as a mother would on a desert
island with one child at her knees."

"You can get another-one not your own, as this isn't," argued Jean
Jacques fiercely.

She was not to be forced to answer his arguments directly. She chose her
own course to convince. "Nolan loves this child as if it was his," she
declared, her eyes all afire, "but he mightn't love another--men are
queer creatures. Then where would I be? and what would the home be but
what it was before--as cold, as cold and bitter! It was the hand of God
brought the child to the door of two people who had no child and who
prayed for one. Do you deny it was the hand of God that brought your
daughter here away, that put the child in my arms? Not its mother, am
I not? But I love her better than twenty mothers could. It's the
hunger--the hunger--the hunger in me. She's made a woman of me. She has
a home where everything is hers--everything. To see Nolan play with her,
tossin' her up and down in his arms as if he'd done it all his life--as
natural as natural! To take her away from that--all the comfort here
where she can have anything she wants! With my old mother to care for
her, if so be I was away to market or whereabouts--one that brought up
six children, a millionaire among them, praise be to God as my mother
did--to take this delicate little thing away from here, what a sin and
crime 'twould be! She herself 'd never forgive you for it, if ever she
grew up--though that's not likely, things bein' as they are with you,
and you bein' what you are. Ah, there--there she is awake and smilin',
and kickin' up her pretty toes this minute! There she is, the lovely
little Zoe, with eyes like black pearls.... See now--see now which
she'll come to--to you or me, m'sieu'. There, put out your arms to
her, and I'll put out mine, and see which she'll take. I'll stand by
that--I'll stand by that. Let the child decide. Hold out your arms, and
so will I."

With an impassioned word Jean Jacques reached down his arms to the
child, which lay laughing up at them and kickin