"What do you mean?"
"What are you going to do with yourself? How occupy yourself?"
"I don't occupy myself. I'm jest settin' around waitin' to die; and, between you and me and the gate-post, Dr. Eaton, I'm not used to jest waitin'. I'm used to doin' somethin' if I am an old woman."
"That's just it—you are used to doing something. Now here's something that you can do that's worth while. There's a whole lot of babies in the world that need a home, and why can't you take your share of them and give them a chance in life?"
"How can I give them a chance?"
"Why, Miss Doane, who could give them a better chance? You have money—"
"Yes—heaps of it; and I set wonderin' what to do with it. I want to spend it and I don't know how."
"How can you spend it better than by taking care of all these babies, by seeing that they'll have love and care instead of being brought up by chance or charity, which is bound to kill every decent instinct a child may be born with."
Here Dr. Eaton got up and began walking around the room. His eyes grew bright, his voice earnest and thrilling to the old woman who watched him as he walked up and down.
"Miss Doane, you have a wonderful chance to do something great. I envy you for the chance. Just think of being able to take these little waifs and provide a place for them to grow up into the men and women that it was intended they should be! Whenever I go down to the orphan asylum and see all the little tads herded around in bunches by paid nurses, and no one really caring for them, no one tucking them up at night, no one singing them little songs, no one hearing their evening prayers, it seems to me that I must take them all away with me. It seems that we are all wrong in a world where a Great Master whose teaching we are supposed to follow said, 'Suffer the little children to come unto me,' when we allow them to be turned into little machines, unloved and uncared for. Oh, Miss Doane, you've got a great chance. Take it!"