Dear Enemy

You can see what a good home it's going to be. There's lots of love

waiting for the little mite, and that is better than all the wealth

which, in this case, goes along.

But the problem now is to find the child, and that isn't easy. The J. F.

Bretlands are so abominably explicit in their requirements. I have

just the baby boy to give them; but with that closetful of dolls, he is

impossible. Little Florence won't do--one tenacious parent living. I've

a wide variety of foreigners with liquid brown eyes--won't do at all.

Mrs. Bretland is a blonde, and daughter must resemble her. I have

several sweet little mites with unspeakable heredity, but the Bretlands

want six generations of church-attending grandparents, with a colonial

governor at the top. Also I have a darling little curly-headed girl (and

curls are getting rarer and rarer), but illegitimate. And that seems to

be an unsurmountable barrier in the eyes of adopting parents, though,

as a matter of fact, it makes no slightest difference in the child.

However, she won't do. The Bretlands hold out sternly for a marriage

certificate.

There remains just one child out of all these one hundred and seven that

appears available. Our little Sophie's father and mother were killed in

a railroad accident, and the only reason she wasn't killed was because

they had just left her in a hospital to get an abscess cut out of her

throat. She comes from good common American stock, irreproachable and

uninteresting in every way. She's a washed-out, spiritless, whiney

little thing. The doctor has been pouring her full of his favorite

cod-liver oil and spinach, but he can't get any cheerfulness into her.

However, individual love and care does accomplish wonders in institution

children, and she may bloom into something rare and beautiful after a

few months' transplanting. So I yesterday wrote a glowing account of her

immaculate family history to J. F. Bretland, offering to deliver her in

Germantown.

This morning I received a telegram from J. F. B. Not at all! He does not

purpose to buy any daughter sight unseen. He will come and inspect the

child in person at three o'clock on Wednesday next.

Oh dear, if he shouldn't like her! We are now bending all our energies

toward enhancing that child's beauty-like a pup bound for the dog

show. Do you think it would be awfully immoral if I rouged her cheeks a

suspicion? She is too young to pick up the habit.

Heavens! what a letter! A million pages written without a break. You can

see where my heart is. I'm as excited over little Sophie's settling in

life as though she were my own darling daughter.