"If I am West and you are East—"
"Do you want to keep her with you?"
"What could I do with her? She will be a white elephant to me. I am not her father; I do not think I understand girls—or boys, or men. I hardly understand you, Prudence."
"Then I am afraid you never will. Isn't it queer how I always have a little girl provided for me? Marjorie is growing up and now I have this child, your niece, John, to be my little girl for a long time. I wonder what her name is."
"He did tell me that! I may have passed over something else; you might better see the letter."
"No; handwriting is like a voice, or a perfume to me—I could not bear it to-night. John, I feel as if it would kill me. It is so long ago—I thought I was stronger—O, John," she leaned her head upon his arm and sobbed convulsively like a little child.
He laid his hand upon her head as if she were indeed the little child, and for a long time no words were spoken.
"Prudence, there is something else, there is the photograph of the little girl—her mother named her Jeroma."
"I will take that," she said, lifting her head, "and I will write to her to-night."
That night before she slept she wrote a long letter to the child with the brown eyes and sunny curls, describing the home in Maple Street, and promising to take her into her heart and keep her there always, to adopt her for her very own little daughter for her own sake and for her father's sake, whom she knew long ago, ending it thus: