“She looks very much as you would have looked, John, at her age, if you had been a girl.”
Her brother stared at the child with a gentleness in his eyes that left them when he glanced at his sister.
“Are you going to adopt her, John?”
The answer came with decision.
“I think I shall.”
“What about her schooling?”
“I shall arrange for that next year. She knows her letters.”
“I’ll take her here and look after her.”
The keeper was startled, but he had long kept himself in hand in the presence of his sister.
“Thank you,” he paused slightly, “but I shall send her to the Biggleses’.”