“My dear ladies,” said the lawyer anxiously, “let me implore you not to be rash.  To adopt a child in the most favorable circumstances is the greatest of risks.  But if your benevolence will take that line, pray adopt some little boy out of one of your tenants’ families.  Even your teaching will not make him brilliant, as he is likely to inherit the minimum of intellectual capacity; but he will learn his catechism, probably grow up respectable, and possibly grateful, since his forefathers have (so Miss Kitty assures me) had all these virtues for generations.  But this baby is the child of a heathen, barbarous, and wandering race.  The propensities of the vagabonds who have deserted him are in every drop of his blood.  All the parsons in the diocese won’t make a Christian of him, and when (after anxieties I shudder to foresee) you flatter yourself that he is civilized, he will run away and leave his shoes and stockings behind him.”

“He has a soul to be saved, if he is a gipsy,” said Miss Kitty, hysterically.

“The soul, my dear Miss Kitty “—­began the lawyer, facing round upon her.

“Don’t say anything dreadful about the soul, sir, I beg,” said Miss Betty, firmly.  And then she added in a conciliatory tone, “Won’t you look at the little fellow, sir?  I have no doubt his relations are shocking people; but when you see his innocent little face and his beautiful eyes, I think you’ll say yourself that if he were a duke’s son he couldn’t be a finer child.”

“My experience of babies is so limited, Miss Betty,” said the lawyer, “that really—­if you’ll excuse me—­but I can quite imagine him.  I have before now been tempted myself to adopt stray—­puppies, when I have seen them in the round, soft, innocent, bright-eyed stage.  And when they have grown up in the hands of more credulous friends into lanky, ill-conditioned, misconducted curs, I have congratulated myself that I was not misled by the graces of an age at which ill-breeding is less apparent than later in life.”

The little ladies both rose.  “If you see no difference, sir,” said Miss Betty in her stateliest manner, “between a babe with an immortal soul and the beasts that perish, it is quite useless to prolong the conversation.”

“Reason is apt to be useless when opposed to the generous impulses of a sex so full of sentiment as yours, madam,” said the lawyer, rising also.  “Permit me to take a long farewell, since it is improbable that our friendship will resume its old position until your protege has—­run away.”

The words “long farewell” and “old friendship” were quite sufficient to soften wrath in the tender hearts of the little ladies.  But the lawyer had really lost his temper, and, before Miss Betty had decided how to offer the olive branch without conceding her principles he was gone.