"You said 'home.' What do you mean? I don't like the word."
Mr. Thornton was plainly irritated.
"A home for foundlings, where the proper care will be given it."
"Yes, but how?" queried Drusilla. "What kind of care?"
Daphne interrupted her father, who was plainly trying to find words to explain the exact meaning of an orphan asylum.
"Oh, Father, that's horrid. It'll be put in with hundreds of other babies, all dressed alike, and all brought up on rules and bells and things—"
"I know now what your father means—an orphan asylum. Just the same thing as an old ladies' home, only backwards. No, I lived in one o' them and I know what it is and," she settled back in her chair, "my baby ain't goin' there."
"But," objected Mr. Thornton, looking helplessly at the obstinate face before him, "that is the only possible way to dispose of him."
"But think of his poor mother, how she'd feel if she read in the paper that he'd been put in a home. She could 'a' done that herself."
"She should have thought of that before leaving him," Mr. Thornton said dryly. "She should not have deserted the child, and does not deserve any consideration."