I'll send no baby to a home. I've eaten charity bread and it was bitter and charity milk would be the same.
That started for Drusilla a strenuous existence for a few days. The next morning a baby—a weak, sickly little thing—was found beside the locked gates, with a note pinned to its tiny jacket. "Won't you please take my baby too?" Drusilla took it into her motherly arms, looked with pitying eyes into its little white pinched face, and sent it to the butler's wife until she could determine what to do with it. The next morning there were two babies waiting; and that night at dinner the butler was called to the door by a ring, and when he opened it, he found a little boy about two years of age standing there with a note in his hand. The grounds were searched for the person who had brought the baby and left it standing there, but no one was found—and he, too, was added to the butler's growing family. In the next week eleven children were brought to the house in aristocratic Brookvale, and Drusilla was frightened at the inundation of young that she had brought upon herself. They were of all kinds and all descriptions. There were John and Hans and Gretchen, and Frieda and Mina and Guiseppi, Rachel, Polvana, Francois; even a little Greek was among the collection. Their names were pinned to their clothing, along with letters—some pitiful and some impertinent, but all asking for a home for the abandoned child. Drusilla was dismayed and sent for the young doctor, as Mr. Thornton's only word was the police and a "home," to both of which Drusilla shook her old gray head vigorously. But she saw that she could not parcel the children out indefinitely among the servants, and consequently Dr. Eaton was asked to come and help her decide what should be done.
When he came in, his eyes twinkled mischievously at Drusilla.
"I hear you have numerous additions to the family," he said.
"Young man," Drusilla said, "you set right there and tell me what to do. You got me in all this trouble. Now you get me out of it."
The doctor stopped in amazement.
"I got you in this trouble? How did I get you in this trouble?"
"Now, don't you look that surprised way at me," said Drusilla severely. "Didn't you tell me all about orphan asylums and babies having to be all dressed in the same way, and have all their hair tied with blue cord, and eat porridge out of a blue bowl, and set down and stand up and go to bed at the ringin' of a bell. Didn't you tell me that?"
"Certainly; I said a few things like that, but—"
"And didn't you make my foolish old eyes jest fill up at the thought of any baby I'd ever held in my arms goin' to a place like that and bein' turned into a little jelly-mold—them's your words, a little jelly-mold—"