Of course, Miss Amelia Cokeland wanted to know if he’d made the Asylum a present, and how much.  At first nobody would tell her.  She’s got such a ripping curiosity that there isn’t a sneeze sneezed in Yorkburg, or a cake baked, or a door shut that she doesn’t want to know why.  But maybe she can’t help it.  Some people are natural inquirers, and that’s the way she makes her living, telling the news.

She used to work buttonholes, but since she can’t see good she just spends the day out and tells all she hears.  Nobody really likes her, but her tongue is too sharp to fool with.  To keep from being talked about, everybody pretends to be friendly.

I don’t.  She shook her finger at me once because I wouldn’t tell her what was in Miss Katherine’s letter the first time she went away, and since then she’s never noticed me until Uncle Parke came.  Now every time I see her she’s awful pleasant, and tries to make me talk.  But a finger once shook is shook.  I don’t talk.

But Uncle Parke did make the Asylum a present.  He didn’t tell me, neither did Miss Katherine, and I don’t think he wanted anybody but the Board ladies to know.  But, of course, they couldn’t keep it secret.  They told their husbands, and that meant the town.  Nothing but a dead man could keep from talking about money.

It must have been a lot he gave, for Peelie Duke told me she heard Mrs. Carr and Mrs. Dent talking about it the day she took some apple-jelly for Miss Jones over to little Jessie Carr, who was sick.

“He could have kept her at a fashionable boarding-school from the day she was born until now for the sum he’s turned over to the Board,” said Mrs. Carr, and her eyes, which are the beaming kind, just danced, Peelie said.

“Well, he ought to,” grunted Mrs. Dent, who talks like her tongue was down her throat.  “He ought to!  We’ve been taking care of the child for almost ten years.  I hear he wants the house put in good condition, a new dining-room and kitchen built and four bath-rooms.  The rest is to go to the endowment.  I think more ought to go to the endowment and less for these luxuries.  I don’t approve of them.  An Orphan Asylum is not a hotel.”

“No, but it ought to be a home, if possible,” said Mrs. Carr, and Peelie said she looked at Mrs. Dent like she wondered how under heaven her husband stood her all the time.

I certainly am glad to know I’m paid for.  Some day, when I’m grown and earning my own living, before I marry my children’s father, I am going to give as much as I can of that money back to Uncle Parke.  Of course that will be some time off, and until then I’ll just have to try to be a nice person.

Miss Katherine says a whole lot of people would pay a big price to have a nice person in the house with them—­one of those cheerful, sunshiny kind that helps and is encouraging, and gets up again when they fall down.  As I can’t earn money yet, I’m going to try to be something like that, so they won’t be sorry I ever was born.  Uncle Parke and Miss Katherine won’t.