Witch Hazel; or, The Secret of the Locket — page 26: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

One day he was hastily summoned, in a rh sioual way, to a foundling asyluin, where a child, a boy about the age of his. own, was suffering from membraneous erolp, It was the child of a poor sailor, the matron said, who had no wife, and who, being unable to care for it himself, had brought it there with the understand- ing thatif any one would provide it a good home it night be given away. ; Dr. Harwood became greatly interested in the little fellow, for his skillful treatment saved the child’s life, and in a-week’s time he was well and strong once more, Then he formed asudden resolution. “Nothing will ever arouse Ada from her. morbid state, until her motherhood is touched,” he said to himself, while he watched his little patient laughing and crowing in the nurse's arms during his last visit. to the asylum. “The boy is just about the age of our Charlie; I be- re the best thing I can do will be to take him home to her. He sought the matron, told her he would take the child as his own, with the proviso that his father should never be told who ha adopted him. The child was given to him, and that evening, just at dusk, he walked into his wife’ 8 room with the little waif in his arms, and laid him, without a word, upon her lap. The child's first act was to look up into the white, sad face above him, and begin to cov and crow inthe most contented fashion imaginable. Ada Harwood shot one astonished look at ee the band; then she gathered the little stra ane’ bosom, and burst into a passion of tea HOUE