“NOW LOOK UP AT ME”
“I suppose I ought to have thought about it more,” she said humbly. “I am afraid I have taken your kindness too much as a matter of course, dear Mrs. Hartwell-Jones. I shall try to show you how truly grateful I am to you for giving me such a happy home! And you know how delighted I am about boarding-school,” she added eagerly. “It seems just like—well, almost like heaven to be like other girls and go to school to learn things and be happy. I shall study hard and be good in school to show how grateful I am. And then, perhaps, when I am grown up, I can teach and pay you back for all you are going to do for me.”
“You dear little girl!” cried Mrs. Hartwell-Jones with a sob in her voice, “I want no thanks but your happiness!
“But now, listen to what I have to say. How would you like being somebody’s little girl in earnest? To have a real home to go to in holiday time, and—and some one to love you and be as nearly a mother to you as it is possible to be?”
Letty looked puzzled and a little frightened.
“Have you found some of my relatives? some one to claim me?” she asked. “Oh, Mrs. Hartwell-Jones, I don’t want to leave you! I don’t, I don’t! You have taken as great care of me as my mother could have. Please don’t send me away!”
“No, no, dear, never. You don’t understand, Letty darling. Do you know what adoption means?”
“No, I am afraid I don’t,” said Letty meekly. She hung her head and blushed, embarrassed as she always was at her ignorance, when asked the meaning of something she did not know.
“It means,” said Mrs. Hartwell-Jones slowly, “that any one who wishes, and there are no reasons why one should not do so, can take a little girl or boy into one’s home and make that child her very own, by law. And it means, Letty darling, that if you are willing, I intend to take you to my home and make you my own little daughter!”
Letty sat staring at her with wide eyes. She was too bewildered—too overwhelmed to speak. Two great tears welled up in Mrs. Hartwell-Jones’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Then she gave an odd little cry and stretched out her arms.