"Perhaps he will," Jack admitted, "and at any rate he will know we don't want to be adopted and he'll go home and tell Mrs. Bobs and she will say, 'Well, we'll have to get some one else who has no mother.'"
"I don't want them to get any one else," said Jean, "because," she added greedily, "the adopted child would get all the candy."
Jack considered this thoughtfully, lying stretched out at full length, her head poking out from under the bed like a turtle from its shell. "I reckon," she said after a while, "they can get along without any child; they have done it all this time and they can just keep on doing it. Which would you rather belong to, Jean, Mrs. Bobs or Mr. St. Nick?"
"Mrs. Bobs, I think."
"I'd rather belong to Mr. St. Nick. Then your name would be Jean Roberts and mine would be Jack Pinckney; wouldn't that be queer?"
"Awfully qreer. I shouldn't like my name to be different from yours; we wouldn't seem like trins any more. There's somebody coming, Jack."
"Keep very still," whispered Jack.
There came a pounding on the door and a voice called: "Where are you, children?"
"It's Nan," whispered Jack drawing her head back under the bed.
"Where are you?" repeated Nan.