The mother dropped an arm around the child, and both she and Alice looked timidly at the questioner.
“Well, by that name, Mary, I claim the care of her.”
The color mounted to Mary’s brows, but the Doctor raised a finger.
“I mean, of course, Mary, only in so far as such care can go without molesting your perfect motherhood, and all its offices and pleasures.”
Her eyes filled again, and her lips parted; but the Doctor was not going to let her reply.
“Don’t try to debate it, Mary. You must see you have no case. Nobody’s going to take her from you, nor do any other of the foolish things, I hope, that are so often done in such cases. But you’ve called her Alice, and Alice she must be. I don’t propose to take care of her for you”—
“Oh, no; of course not,” interjected Mary.
“No,” said the Doctor; “you’ll take care of her for me. I intended it from the first. And that brings up another point. You mustn’t teach school. No. I have something else—something better—to suggest. Mary, you and John have been a kind of blessing to me”—
She would have interrupted with expressions of astonishment and dissent, but he would not hear them.
“I think I ought to know best about that,” he said. “Your husband taught me a great deal, I think. I want to put some of it into practice. We had a—an understanding, you might say—one day toward the—end—that I should do for him some of the things he had so longed and hoped to do—for the poor and the unfortunate.”