mouth as wide as nature would allow. The boy laughed and his sister smiled contentedly.

Mary Louise resumed, in her pleasant voice:

"Then such a business! Mother and Father Robin will be working every minute of daylight to try and fill those hungry mouths. Poor little worms will be afraid to show their noses or their tails because there will be a robin ready to peck them up and carry them off to their babies. Those little birds will eat so much that by and by they will begin to grow feathers and they will be pretty and fluffy and two of them will take after their father and have very red breasts and two of them will take after their mother and have just a delicate shade of red on their breasts. And after those little birds get all covered with feathers and their wings begin to grow strong Father Robin will say to Mother Robin, 'See here, my dear, it is time these young rascals learned how to fly and to grub for themselves.' That will make Mother Robin sad, because she hates for her babies to grow up and have to leave her."

"O—h!" in a long-drawn sigh from the little girl. "Do you think she feels that way? How wonderful?"

"Of course she does; at least she will," smiled Mary Louise.

"Go on!" commanded Peter. "Polly, don't interrupt! Will they leave their nice house—I mean nest?"

Josie silently noted the speech of the children. "From the South!" was her verdict. "Soft slurred r's and the way the boy says house would give them away."

"Yes," continued Mary Louise, "some pleasant morning in June, perhaps, they will awaken very early and their mother and father will get busy catching the early worm for their breakfast. You see, nobody must ever try to do anything very important, like learning to fly, on an empty stomach."

"That's what I been a-tellin' Polly; but go on, please."

"Then, when they are all fed and full and happy, Mother Robin balances herself on the side of the nest and spreads her wings and says 'Now, children, watch me!' and she floats down to the ground."

"From away up in the tree tops?"

"No, not so high up, because you see robins build in high bushes and hedges, but it will seem very far to the little birds, as high as the top of trees and even church steeples would seem to you."

"But if my mother would say, 'Come on, Peter, and jump off the church steeple, I'm a-gonter do it. I wouldn't feel 'fraid—not a mite, not if my mo—" But he could not finish the word mother. A realization of something came over him and again his lip trembled and he seemed on the verge of more tears and sobs.

"And then the little birds," continued Mary Louise quickly, trying to keep the tears from her own sweet eyes, "they will look over the edge of the nest and see their mother hopping around on the soft green grass, and maybe they will see her catch a nice fat wiggly worm and, wonder of wonders! and horror of horrors! instead of flying back to the nest to give it to one of her babies she will gobble it up her own self. That won't be because she is a greedy mother, but just to let them realize that if they get down on the grass they can find plenty of delicious worms for themselves. Then Father Robin will tell them they are all little cry-babies not to jump up and fly from the nest, and one by one the little baby birds will make up their minds and before you know it all four will be down in the grass by their mother. Then, goodness gracious me! what a busy day they will have! The little birds are very plump, because their mother and father have worked so hard to keep them well fed and they have never taken any exercise before except with their mouths, and their little wings seem so weak and their little tummies are so fat and so full, but they try and try and by dusk they have almost learned. At any rate they are able to flutter back into the bush where their old nest is, not that they ever expect to get back in their nest. They would no more try to do that than a great big grown-up man would want to get back in the little cradle in which his mother had rocked him when he was a baby."

The biography of the robins was finished just as Dr. Weston came in to announce to Mary Louise and Josie that they had been elected to the board of governors of the Children's Home Society.

"Oh, but—" faltered Mary Louise.

"No buts at all, Mary Louise," insisted Josie. "Of course you must serve because you are interested and I'll serve too just to keep you in countenance."

"I think this lady wishes to speak with you, Dr. Weston."

The old man had been so full of his news that he had for the moment overlooked the other occupants of his office. He now turned courteously to the woman who stood up as though she had about finished her business and was ready to leave.

"If you are the manager then I can go," she asserted. "I want to leave these two children with you."

"Not so fast, madam!" said Dr. Weston. "We don't take little children offhand this way. We must find out who they are, why they are here, who is placing them here, all about their parentage—many things, in fact. I shall ask you to be seated, madam, for a few moments while I conduct these young ladies to the board, which is now in session."

The woman resumed her seat, a sullen expression on her handsome face. Dr. Weston drew the girls into the parlor, carefully closed the door and then, with a graceful little speech, courtly and kindly, he presented the new members.

"We think it is splendid that you will give the house to us," said one to Mary Louise, who was smiling happily.

"When can we get in?" asked another.

"Immediately!"

"We can't afford to move," spake the treasurer.

"Well, we can't afford to stay here, either," snapped Mrs. Wright. "We'll just raise the money by hook or crook."

"I—I—will give some money along with the house," faltered Mary Louise. "It isn't very much, but if $50,000 would help any I can give that much."

The board was not noted for its sense of humor, but even it realized how absurd it was for this slip of a girl to be so modest with her fifty thousand dollars, and was it enough? The board burst into laughter. Dr. Weston looked as though he might burst with pride and happiness.

"To whom must I make the check?" asked Mary Louise simply, as though making checks for fifty thousand dollars was no more than paying one's gas bill.

"To the treasurer," answered the president, with a gasp.

"No, no, not to me! I would be afraid to carry around such a check." But the treasurer was overruled and Mary Louise proceeded to make out a check there and then. Her fortune had been left to her in cash owing to her grandfather's being unbalanced many months before his death and having converted all of his securities into gold, which he had hid away.

"I'll have the deeds to the house made over to the Children's Home Society as soon as Mr. Conant, my lawyer, can manage it," said Mary Louise.

There being no further business before the board it was joyfully and noisily adjourned by the smiling but flustered president.

"Now I must go interview the woman with the two little children," Dr. Weston said to Josie and Mary Louise.

"I must see the children again," declared Mary Louise. "Poor lambs!" But when the door leading to the office was opened the room was found empty. The woman and two children had disappeared.

CHAPTER IV
JOSIE DONS A HENNA WIG

"Believe me, there's something shady about that woman!" said Josie to Mary Louise. "She was ready enough to leave the kids until Dr. Weston told her she would have to produce some kind of information about them. That is what scared her off."

"Dear little children," said Mary Louise sadly. "I wonder if she is their mother."

"Of course not! There wasn't a trace of resemblance."

"I know she was a decided brunette and the children were blue-eyed and tow-headed," Mary Louise remembered.

"Color isn't such a proof as line