My husband arranged everything about the adoption. He wanted me not to be troubled with details. He wanted me to feel that you were my own dear child, not adopted. So I never asked much about the facts.

I saw you first in the hospital. We were going through looking for a baby we could adopt, and when I saw you in the ward, I fell in love with you, only to find you were not for adoption.

I never told you that you were one of twins. I did not want you to be drawn away from me by other ties. Perhaps I was selfish in that. I begin to feel now that I was. But anyhow it is past and cannot be undone. However, I feel that you should know. If you feel like blaming me I beg you to be pitiful, for I loved you.

You were a very beautiful baby, and so was your twin sister, yet she had a frailer look than you, and we found upon questioning that she had little chance to live unless she could have an operation and special treatment, which your parents were unable to give her.

But though neither of you were candidates for adoption, yet I had set my heart upon you. After seeing you, all the other babies looked common to me. So, my husband set about it to see what he could do. He discovered that your father was not strong and needed to get away to the country where he could have light work and be out of doors. My husband finally put it up to your mother while she was still in the hospital that she should give her consent to our adopting you, Mr. Wetherill agreeing to finance the treatment of both your father and little sister, and to make it possible for your family to live on a nice little farm where they could be able to support themselves until better days came.

These details I did not know at the time. I only knew that to my great joy you were mine at last, adopted according to law, your parents signing over all rights and promising not to try to see you without our consent.

Once, when you were about three months old, your mother wrote me, begging that she might come and see you, but I persuaded her that it would be better for us all if she did not, that it would be easier for her not to have seen you. Your father—Mr. Wetherill—went to see your own father and had some sort of an understanding with him, so that they did not come near us or write any more. So the years went by, and I was very happy with you. My dear, you know that you have always been to me all that a child born to me could have been, and perhaps a little more, because I had picked you out from all the babies in the world to be mine.

It was not until after my husband died that I heard again of your birth family. It seems they had saved and saved, and gathered together enough to pay back all the money that Mr. Wetherill had given them when he adopted you, and they wrote begging Mr. Wetherill to accept it and to allow them to come and see you at least occasionally.

I sent the money back, of course, and wrote very firmly refusing their request, feeling that it would be most disastrous. I had no idea just what kind of people they were, and I felt it might hurt your life.

But then, about a year ago, just as you were graduating from Miss Evans’s School, your mother came to see me.

I was surprised at what a lovely, frail little woman she was. She was very plainly dressed, but she looked neat and pretty, and she had eyes like yours. It went to my heart. She said sometimes she could not sleep at night, thinking that she had given you up. She said it seemed at times as if she would go crazy thinking of things she might have done instead, to raise the money to save the lives of her husband and other child, and yet keep you.

I really felt very sorry for her. She looked so much like you that I began to feel like a criminal.