Harry’s shoulders sagged. “I’m scared, Miss Kelly. You don’t know how scared.”
“Yes, I do,” Frances said. “I was scared, too, when I thought my brothers and sisters and I would be separated.”
“I can’t let anything bad happen to Adam,” Harry insisted.
“We won’t let anything bad happen to him,” Frances said. “A few months after the placing-out, Andrew MacNair comes to each of the homes to make sure the children and the adults are happy.”
Harry wiped a hand across his eyes. “But how can Adam be happy without me?” he asked.
Adam suddenly shouted, “Harry! Where are you?”
“Right here,” Harry called. “Please, Miss Kelly. Please try to keep us together.”
“I’ll try,” Frances promised, and fought to hold back her own tears.
She rose to continue down the aisle, but a sob stopped her. She looked down at David Howard, who was rubbing his eyes with his fists.
“Want to tell me about it, David?” Frances asked as she knelt next to his seat.
“I miss my chum, Mickey,” David answered.
Frances patted David’s shoulder. “Tell me about Mickey,” she said.
David gave a long sniffle, squinted at Frances, and said, “Mickey’s the best chum anybody could ever have. He’s older than me, so he looked out for me. He’s a street arab, and smart as—”
Frances interrupted. “What did you call him?”
David looked surprised. “A street arab,” he said. “Mickey sold newspapers and shined shoes, and he took care of me. He said I’d never be anything more than a guttersnipe, and not a very good guttersnipe at that.”
“Oh, David, I’m sure that Mickey didn’t mean it,” Frances told him.
David looked back at Frances with big eyes. “Yes, miss, he meant it,” David said. “Guttersnipes aren’t smart enough to be street arabs. I tried, but I couldn’t take care of myself. So Mickey decided I should go west on an orphan train and find a family to take care of me.”
“I—I’m sure Mickey was right,” Frances said.
“Mickey’s always right,” David said matter-of-factly. “He said that a family would give me love and food and a good bed to sleep in, and even send me to school.”
“That’s true,” Frances said.
“I’m not sure about school, though. I read some because Mickey taught me, but it’s hard,” David said.
Frances hugged David. “Mickey is a very special friend,” she said.
David nodded as he whispered, “That’s why I miss him so much.”
Frances continued up the aisle to her seat. To her surprise, Seth was waiting for her.
“Hello, Mother Kelly,” he teased. “Have you patted enough little heads and wiped away enough little tears?”
Frances sighed as she sat down beside him. “You haven’t done what I asked you to do.”
Seth was startled. “What did you ask me to do?”
“Remember your own childhood,” she said. “No one can truly understand children unless he’s able to remember how he himself felt as a child.”
“Who’s the preacher—you or me?” he asked with a smile. “You also told me to forget the past and look to the future.”
“I told you to forget the unhappiness of the past, not the happy parts,” Frances said.
Seth shook his head. “I can’t—not yet,” he said. “That’s the fire that keeps me goin’.” He paused for a moment, pulling out a battered silver pocket watch to check the time.
Frances noted the initials SRC engraved on its cover. How odd, she thought. S could be for Seth, but that’s his second name. And what could R and C stand for? Maybe it hadn’t always been Seth’s watch. Maybe it had once belonged to someone else, like an uncle or grandfather. A relative whose last name wasn’t Diller.
Suddenly Seth asked, “Are your parents still livin’, Frances Mary?”
“My mother is,” she said, “but my father died when I was a child.”
“I lost both my parents in the war,” Seth said. He leaned forward, balancing his forearms on his thighs, clasping his hands together so tightly his knuckles looked like white knobs. “That union butcher, General Lyons, swept his troops across their land, stealin’ their food and everythin’ of value. Then the Federals burned the house and destroyed the crops. My parents tried to protest, and they were killed.”
“Oh, Seth! I’m terribly sorry,” Frances said.
“Sorry isn’t enough,” he grunted. “Nothin’ can make up for what the Federals did.”