a woman who had died at its birth, from the shock of an accident which had killed the father.  It took a fancy to Josephine, and she wanted to adopt it.  The committee took the matter up.  The clergyman spoke well of her, as did every one, and they all decided that she was perfectly able to care for it.  So she took the child.  All of a sudden, one day, Josephine went, as she had come.  There was no mystery about it.  She told the clergyman that she was homesick for her old friends, and had gone east, and would write, and she always has.

“Of course I was puzzled.  There was no doubt in my mind that it was our little Josephine.  Naturally I was discreet.  Luckily.  I spoke of her to several people who remembered her, and they all called her ‘dear little Josephine’ just as we had.  I talked of her with the clergyman and his wife.  I asked questions that were too natural to rouse suspicions, when I told them that I knew her, that the baby was the dearest and happiest child I knew, and what do you suppose I found out, more by inference than facts?”

No need to ask me.  Didn’t I know?

Josephine had never been married.  There had never been any “He.”  It all seemed so natural.  It did not shock me, as it had the Matron, and I was glad she had told no one but me.  Dear little Josephine!  Sitting there in the Association without family, with no friends but her patrons, and those girls whose little romances went on about her!  No romances ever came her way.  So she had made one all of her own.  I proved to the Matron easily that what she had discovered by accident was not her affair, that to keep Josephine’s secret was a virtue, and not a sin.  I was sure of that, for, as I watched her afterwards, I knew that Josephine had played her part in her dream romance so well, that she no longer remembered that it was not true.  She had forgotten she had not really borne the child she carried so lovingly in her arms.

* * * * *

“Is that all?” asked the Journalist.

“That is all,” replied the Trained Nurse.

“By Jove,” said the Doctor, “that is a good story.  I wish I had told it.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” laughed the Trained Nurse.  “I thought it was a bit in your line.”

“But fancy the cleverness of the little thing to do all the details up so nicely,” said the Lawyer.  “She dovetailed everything so neatly.  But what I want to know is whether she planned the baby when she planned the make-believe husband?”

“I fancy not,” replied the Nurse.  “One thing came along after another in her imagination, quite naturally.”

“Poor little Josephine—­it seems to me hard luck to have had to imagine such an every day fate,” sighed the Divorcee.

“Don’t pity her,” snapped the Doctor.  “Poor little Josephine, indeed!  Lucky little Josephine, who arranged her own romance, and risked no disillusion.  There have been cases where the joys of the imagination have been more dangerous.”