"Well, he's ours, and—"
"He's his father's and mother's," she conceded; "they would naturally want to see him."
"Yes," Carl Robertson said; "but of course we could never do more than that. We could never have him."
Miss Lydia felt her legs trembling, and she put her hands under her black silk apron lest they might tremble, too. "No," she agreed, "I suppose you couldn't."
He nodded. "It would be impossible; people must never suspect—" He stopped through sheer shame at the thought of all the years he had hidden behind this small, scared-looking woman, who had had no place to hide from a ridiculous but pursuing suspicion.
When he got back to Philadelphia and told his wife about the boy, he said, "Some of those old cats in Old Chester actually thought he was—her own child."
"What!"
"Fools. But, Mary, she never betrayed us—that little old woman! She never told the truth."
"She never knew it was said."
"God knows, I hope she didn't. . . . We ought to have kept him."