"You liked her for your little girl because you haven't any of your own?" pursued Maizie.
Mrs. Reynolds nodded, and Maizie sighed her relief.
"Well, then, we'll adopt these orphans out to you, Mrs. Reynolds. I'm sorry for them now, and I know I ought to be kind to them, but it will be easier for me if you have them. I think you'd be awfully happy with two real children of your very own."
No one spoke. The little boy, laggard usually in movement, looked up quickly at Mrs. Reynolds. He knew that Maizie found it difficult to be patient with him, and that therefore she was offering him and his sister to the kind-looking lady.
"We like them pretty well, but we'd rather you'd have them," Maizie went on generously but with unswerving purpose. "And till you get used to children I'll come over every day and wash and dress them."
Mrs. Reynolds' face was growing pinker and pinker. She continued gazing at the boy and the girl, and from them back to Suzanna, her favorite. But whatever emotions surged through her she found for the moment no words to express them. At last she spoke in a whimsical way.
"It's not much you're asking, little girl, to take and raise and educate two growing children on Reynolds' wages." And then she blushed furiously and glanced half apologetically at Mrs. Procter. For what, indeed, was Mrs. Procter's work? With superb defiance toward mathematical rules, she was daily engaged in proving that though those rules contended that two and two make four, if you have backbone and ingenuity two and two make five, and could by stretching be compelled to make six.
"I must be going," said Mrs. Reynolds. She gathered up carefully the paper pattern, folded its long length into several pieces, opened her hand bag and thrust the small package within. "Thank you for your help, Mrs. Procter. I think I can manage nicely now," she said, as she snapped the bag together.
Mrs. Procter repeated the conversation to her husband that evening, as, the children in bed, they sat together in the little parlor. "And it might be the most wonderful happening in the world, both for the poor children and for Mrs. Reynolds," said Mrs. Procter.
Mr. Procter did not answer. His wife, watching him keenly, realized that he was troubled. She put down her sewing. "Tell me, Richard, what's gone wrong," she said.