You can see what a good home it's going to be. There's lots of love
waiting for the little mite, and that is better than all the wealth
which, in this case, goes along.
But the problem now is to find the child, and that isn't easy. The J. F.
Bretlands are so abominably explicit in their requirements. I have
just the baby boy to give them; but with that closetful of dolls, he is
impossible. Little Florence won't do--one tenacious parent living. I've
a wide variety of foreigners with liquid brown eyes--won't do at all.
Mrs. Bretland is a blonde, and daughter must resemble her. I have
several sweet little mites with unspeakable heredity, but the Bretlands
want six generations of church-attending grandparents, with a colonial
governor at the top. Also I have a darling little curly-headed girl (and
curls are getting rarer and rarer), but illegitimate. And that seems to
be an unsurmountable barrier in the eyes of adopting parents, though,
as a matter of fact, it makes no slightest difference in the child.
However, she won't do. The Bretlands hold out sternly for a marriage
certificate.
There remains just one child out of all these one hundred and seven that
appears available. Our little Sophie's father and mother were killed in
a railroad accident, and the only reason she wasn't killed was because
they had just left her in a hospital to get an abscess cut out of her
throat. She comes from good common American stock, irreproachable and
uninteresting in every way. She's a washed-out, spiritless, whiney
little thing. The doctor has been pouring her full of his favorite
cod-liver oil and spinach, but he can't get any cheerfulness into her.
However, individual love and care does accomplish wonders in institution
children, and she may bloom into something rare and beautiful after a
few months' transplanting. So I yesterday wrote a glowing account of her
immaculate family history to J. F. Bretland, offering to deliver her in
Germantown.
This morning I received a telegram from J. F. B. Not at all! He does not
purpose to buy any daughter sight unseen. He will come and inspect the
child in person at three o'clock on Wednesday next.
Oh dear, if he shouldn't like her! We are now bending all our energies
toward enhancing that child's beauty-like a pup bound for the dog
show. Do you think it would be awfully immoral if I rouged her cheeks a
suspicion? She is too young to pick up the habit.
Heavens! what a letter! A million pages written without a break. You can
see where my heart is. I'm as excited over little Sophie's settling in
life as though she were my own darling daughter.