“He will,” Margaret said, “I’ve never known him to go back on his word yet.”
“Trust Margaret to stick up for David. Anyway, I’ve taken the precaution to put it in writing, as you know, and the document is filed.”
“We’re not adopting this infant legally.”
“No, Gertrude, we can’t,—yet, but morally we are. She isn’t an infant, she’s ten years old. I wish you girls would take the matter a little more seriously. We’ve bound ourselves to be responsible for this child’s whole future. We have undertaken her moral, social and religious education. Her body and soul are to be—”
“Equally divided among us,” Gertrude cut in.
Beulah scorned the interruption.
“—held sacredly in trust by the six of us, severally and collectively.”
“Why haven’t we adopted her legally then?” Margaret asked. 16
“Well, you see, there are practical objections. You have to be a corporation or an institution or something, to adopt a child as a group. A child can’t have three sets of parents in the eyes of the law, especially when none of them is married, or have the least intention of being married, to each other.—I don’t see what you want to keep laughing at, Gertrude. It’s all a little unusual and modern and that sort of thing, but I don’t think it’s funny. Do you, Margaret?”
“I think that it’s funny, but I think that it’s serious, too, Beulah.”