I don't know whether the situation appalls you as
much as it does me--" He broke off as he heard the bell ring.

"That's David, he said he was coming."

Then as David appeared laden with the lost carpetbag and a huge box of
chocolates, he waved him to a chair, and took up his speech again. "I
don't know whether the situation appalls you, as much as it does
me--if I don't get this off my chest now, David, I can't do it at
all--but the thought of that poor little waif in there and the
struggle she's had, and the shy valiant spirit of her,--the sand that
she's got, the _sand_ that put her through and kept her mouth shut
through experiences that might easily have killed her, why I feel as
if I'd give anything I had in the world to make it up to her, and yet
I'm not altogether sure that I could--that we could--that it's any of
our business to try it."

"There's nobody else who will, if we don't," David said.

"That's it," Peter said, "I've never known any one of our bunch to
quit anything that they once started in on, but just by way of
formality there is one thing we ought to do about this proposition
before we slide into it any further, and that is to agree that we want
to go on with it, that we know what we're in for, and that we're
game."

"We decided all that before we sent for the kid," Jimmie said, "didn't
we?"

"We decided we'd adopt a child, but we didn't decide we'd adopt this
one. Taking the responsibility of this one is the question before the
house just at present."

"The idea being," David added, "that she's a fairly delicate piece of
work, and as time advances she's going to be _delicater_."

"And that it's an awkward matter to play with souls," Beulah
contributed; whereupon Jimmie murmured, "Browning," sotto voice.

"She may be all that you say, Gram," Jimmie said, after a few minutes
of silence, "a thunderingly refined and high-minded young waif, but
you will admit that without an interpreter of the same class, she
hasn't been much good to us so far."

"Good lord, she isn't refined and high-minded," Peter said. "That's
not the idea. She's simply supremely sensitive and full of the most
pathetic possibilities. If we're going to undertake her we ought to
realize fully what we're up against, and acknowledge it,--that's all
I'm trying to say, and I apologize for assuming that it's more my
business than anybody's to say it."

"That charming humility stuff, if I could only remember to pull it."

T