She explained through her tears.
"I brought them here for Amy to play with. I thought— You know how they all look down on her here, father. She never had a playmate. I thought if she were happier, if there were little friends of her own age about her, that I might coax her back again, get her to stay with me for awhile. I saw the two children standing at their gate. I only borrowed them. Sure, I didn't mean them any harm."
Her voice broke off again into sobs.
It was Dick who created a diversion at this moment. He had been hunting through his pockets, and now he brought out all his precious things,—the knob off the machine drawer, the stopper of the cologne bottle, the ten missionary cents that were to educate the native child in India, even the Waterbury watch,—and laid them in a little pile on the bed. He pulled the old priest's hand to attract his attention.
"They're for her," he explained, with a nod at the bed.
He half touched the watch, and drew his hand away again.
"To keep," he persisted, bravely. "Tell her not to cry. Oh, tell her not to cry!"
But the woman cried only the harder.
The old priest took us home very carefully, down the rickety steps, and through the dirty courts and lanes, straight to the Green Door. All the ferocious-looking black men whom we met stopped to speak to him, and he ordered them about, with an air of authority, like so many small children. On the way he asked us many questions, and I confided the whole story to him, of how little brother Dick had been naughty, and had eaten the gingerbread and had been disowned, and how we had started out into the wide world together. Somehow I was glad that we hadn't gone any farther. Somehow home seemed a nicer place now. It was so quiet and so safe, with pleasant rooms, and a peaceful, sunny garden, and white, comfortable beds, where we slept through the long nights, and kind faces to smile on us, and love to surround us always. I cried a little as I told him about it.
"There is only one home, and one father and mother," the old priest said, seriously. "Remember that. And be good children. The holy grace of God be upon you, my dears."