"Wouldn't it be as hard a matter to prove the parentage, as it would be easy to suspect it?" I asked. "And just think what it would be to give the baby to a woman who not only did not want her, but who was not her mother. But if her own mother came to claim her now, I don't say I would refuse her, but I should think twice about giving her up after she had once abandoned her for a whole night in the open air. In fact I don't want the parents."
"But you don't want the child."
"How do you know that?" I returned—rather rudely, I am afraid, for I am easily annoyed at anything that seems to me heartless—about children especially.
"O! of course, if you want to have an orphan asylum of your own, no one has a right to interfere. But you ought to consider other people."
"That is just what I thought I was doing," I answered; but he went on without heeding my reply—
"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.