"
"You will make her vain if you continue praising her so much," Mr.
Winthrop remonstrated.
"She has not a natural tendency that way, and we have not helped to
foster her vanity; if we have erred, it has been in the other direction."
"Please let us cease talking personalities. Why don't you admire and
talk about this lovely boy? Wouldn't you like to have us adopt him at
Oaklands, Mr. Winthrop?"
"I expect you will not be quite satisfied until you get the position of
matron in some huge asylum for widows and orphans, with a few widowers
thrown in for variety."
"I should enjoy such a position, I believe. It never occurred to me
before. Only think! Gathering up little bits of motherless humanity
like this, and training them into noble men and women. They would go on
perpetuating my work long after my eyes were sleeping under the daisies.
Why that would be next thing to the immortality most of us long for."
"Do you really think you would like such a career?"
"Yes, really. If you would only help me to begin now, in a small way at
first, and build a pretty cottage in one of the Glens around Oaklands."
"Have you no higher ambition than to take care of children?"
"But what could be higher, at least within my reach? I am not clever
enough to write books--at least not good ones, and there are too many
fifth and sixth rate ones now in the market. My painting and music won't
ever amount to anything more than my book-writing could do; so what
remains for me but to try and make the world the better for having lived
in it? And the only way any of us can do that is to work for human
beings.
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