she went away, and
since then she's never noticed me until Uncle Parke came. Now every time
I see her she's awful pleasant, and tries to make me talk. But a finger
once shook is shook. I don't talk.

But Uncle Parke did make the Asylum a present. He didn't tell me,
neither did Miss Katherine, and I don't think he wanted anybody but the
Board ladies to know. But, of course, they couldn't keep it secret. They
told their husbands, and that meant the town. Nothing but a dead man
could keep from talking about money.

It must have been a lot he gave, for Peelie Duke told me she heard Mrs.
Carr and Mrs. Dent talking about it the day she took some apple-jelly
for Miss Jones over to little Jessie Carr, who was sick.

"He could have kept her at a fashionable boarding-school from the day
she was born until now for the sum he's turned over to the Board," said
Mrs. Carr, and her eyes, which are the beaming kind, just danced, Peelie
said.

"Well, he ought to," grunted Mrs. Dent, who talks like her tongue was
down her throat. "He ought to! We've been taking care of the child for
almost ten years. I hear he wants the house put in good condition, a new
dining-room and kitchen built and four bath-rooms. The rest is to go to
the endowment. I think more ought to go to the endowment and less for
these luxuries. I don't approve of them. An Orphan Asylum is not a
hotel."

"No, but it ought to be a home, if possible," said Mrs. Carr, and Peelie
said she looked at Mrs. Dent like she wondered how under heaven her
husband stood her all the time.

I certainly am glad to know I'm paid for. Some day, when I'm grown and
earning my own living, before I marry my children's father, I am going
to give as much as I can of that money back to Uncle Parke. Of course
that will be some time off, and until then I'll just have to try to be
a nice person.

Miss Katherine says a whole lot of people would pay a big price to have
a nice person in the house with them--one of those cheerful, sunshiny
kind that helps and is encouraging, and gets up again when they fall
down. As I can't earn money yet, I'm going to try to be something like
that, so they won't be sorry I ever was born. Uncle Parke and Miss
Katherine won't.

But isn't it strange, when the time comes for you to do a thing you are
crazy to do, you wish it hadn't come?

There have been days when I hated this Asylum. I've felt at times that I
was just one of the numbers of the multiplication table