Baron dropped into a chair. “You know I’m awfully sorry, mother,” he said. There was a singular lack of real repentance in his tone.
“I don’t doubt that. Still, you might have taken me into your confidence before you brought that little limb of Satan into the house. I never heard of such a child. Never.”
“But you know what the circumstances were——”
“Don’t go into that again. I know that you brought her here, and that there wasn’t any excuse for such a foolish action.”
“But, mother!” Baron’s face was heavy with perplexity. “She’s such a little thing! She hasn’t got anybody to turn to when she’s in trouble. My goodness! I think she’s done nobly—not whimpering once since she came into the house. She’s probably—rattled! How would you or I behave if we were in her shoes?”
Mrs. Baron’s eyebrows steadily mounted. “The point is, we’re not in the slightest degree responsible for her. I want to know how we’re going to get rid of her.”
Baron had taken a chair directly in front of his mother. Now he arose and paced the floor. When he spoke his tone was crisp almost to sharpness.
“It isn’t any more difficult now than it was yesterday,” he said. “I can turn her over to the police.”
Something in his manner startled his mother. She flushed quickly. “That’s just like you,” she protested. “What do you suppose people would say if we turned a motherless child over to the police? You ought to see that you’ve forced a responsibility on me!”
“Well, I should think it would be a question of what your own conscience says. As for ‘people,’ I don’t see why anybody need know anything about it.”