"Couldn't _you_ take her, Mrs. Mapes?" pleaded Mabel.
"No, I'm afraid I couldn't. If she were the least bit lovable----"
"Not to me," returned Mrs. Mapes, firmly.
"What! With all the family I have now? I couldn't think of such a thing."
"Then you," begged Mabel, turning to Aunty Jane. "There's only you and Marjory in that great big house. Oh, _do_ take her."
"Mercy! I'd just as soon undertake to board a live bear! Why! Nobody wants a child of _that_ sort around. She's as homely----"
"I'm extremely glad," said Mabel, with much dignity and a great deal of emphasis, "that _my_ child doesn't understand grown-up English."
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Mapes, smiling with sympathetic understanding, "we four older people had better talk this matter over by ourselves. Suppose you walk home with me.
"_I_ think," said Aunty Jane, forgetting all about the saucepan that had led her to the Cottage, "that the orphan asylum is the place for that unspeakable child."
"Yes," agreed Mrs. Bennett, "she'll certainly have to go to the asylum."
THE Cottage door closed behind the three excited parents and Aunty Jane. The four Cottagers, all decidedly pale and subdued, looked at one another in silence. It is one thing to confess a fault; it is quite another to be ignominiously found out. Jean and Bettie and Marjory were feeling this very keenly; but Mabel was far more troubled at the prospect of losing Rosa Marie.
"The orphan asylum!" breathed Bettie, at length.
"It's wicked," blazed Mabel, "to make an orphan of a person that isn't."
"I've heard," said Marjory, reflectively, "that orphans have to eat fried liver."
"Oh _horrors_!" moaned Mabel, who detested both liver and codfish.
"And prunes," pursued teasing Marjory, wickedly remembering Mabel's dislike for that wholesome but insipid fruit. The prunes proved entirely too much for Mabel.
"Pup--pup--prunes!" she sobbed. "And you stand there and don't do a thing to save her! I guess if I were Eliza escaping with my baby on cakes of ice----"
"Rosa Marie's about the right color," giggled Marjory, who could not resist so fine an opportunity to tease excitable Mabel.
"You'd all be glad enough to help, but when it's just me----"
"Oh, we'll help," soothed Jean, slipping an arm about Mabel. "You know we always do stand by you."