“Yes, I know; but I do not believe Mr. and Mrs. Fairfax could love you more if you were their own little boy.”
“I am their own little boy, too. I mean, I mean——” and without a word of warning Regie burst into tears.
An unusually sweet look of sympathy came into Sister Julia's face just then, as she moved her rocking-chair close to the cot, and began stroking Regie's hair, for he was crying too hard for her to attempt to reason with him. Her heart went straight out to this high-strung, sensitive boy, and she was sorry enough in any way to have grieved him. By-and-by, when the tears were somewhat under control, he said, with a little convulsive sob between every two or three words——
“I know you did not mean to say anything, but I could not help crying. Some folks, you know, thinks there isn't any good in adopted children. It's an awful pity fellows can't choose their own fathers and mothers; I'd have chosen Papa and Mamma Fairfax every time, and then I could have called them just papa and mamma the way other children do. I do wish they'd never told me about it,” and the tears threatened to overflow again.
“Ah, Regie,” said Sister Julia, quietly, “you know that they have taught you to call them Papa and Mamma Fairfax only because they feel they have no right to the very same names as you would have used for your own father and mother, if they had lived.”
“Yes, I know,” he answered, sadly.
“Regie, I would like to tell you a story. Do you feel like listening?”
A sort of little after-sob helped to give Regie's head a forward shake which meant, yes, he would like to listen.
“Well, about thirty years ago, a little girl was left quite alone in the world. Her father, a young physician, and her mother, were both taken away in one week by a terrible fever, which had broken out in the village in which they lived. At first there seemed to be no one to care for the little girl, but after a while a lady, whose baby had died with the fever, offered to take her; and oh, how kind she was to her for years and years, and the little girl never dreamed that she was not her very own mother. Well, it happened one day at school, when the little girl was twelve years old, that an unkind boy called to her: 'Say, Julia, you're only adopted, aren't you?' Only adopted, what could he mean? The words kept ringing in Julia's heart, and at recess she slipped away and ran home as fast as she could.”
“'It is not true that I am only adopted, is it, mamma?' she said, as she rushed into the house.”