“We shall all be having babies left at our doors, and some of us are not so fond of them as you are. Remember, you are your brother’s keeper.”
“And my sister’s too,” I answered. “And if the question lies between keeping a big, burly brother like you, and a tiny, wee sister like that, I venture to choose for myself.”
“She ought to go to the workhouse,” said the magistrate—a friendly, good-natured man enough in ordinary—and rising, he took his hat and departed.
This man had no children. So he was—or was not, so much to blame. Which? I say the latter.
Some of Ethelwyn’s friends were no less positive about her duty in the affair. I happened to go into the drawing-room during the visit of one of them—Miss Bowdler.
“But, my dear Mrs. Walton,” she was saying, “you’ll be having all the tramps in England leaving their babies at your door.”
“The better for the babies,” interposed I, laughing.
“But you don’t think of your wife, Mr. Walton.”
“Don’t I? I thought I did,” I returned dryly.
“Depend upon it, you’ll repent it.”