Circle of Love(34)

“Reward? Why should the boy get a reward? He’s only a child.”

There was a great deal Frances would have liked to say to these busybodies, but she held her tongue and marched briskly past them down a dusty street to the Methodist church.

She led the children past the seventy or eighty people who crowded the room, to a raised platform on which three rows of stools had been arranged. A stout middle-aged woman stepped up next to Frances and pointed to three people seated in chairs at the side of the room. “I’m Mrs. Judson, and that’s my committee,” she said. “We know most of the people around these parts, which is why the Society asked us to serve. If you have any questions about anyone who wants to take in a child, you just ask us.”

“Thank you,” Frances said.

She seated the smaller children in front, the larger in back. When the children were ready, the sheriff raised his voice, so that it boomed against the back wall. “Quiet down,” he bellowed. “listen to what Miss Kelly has to say.”

Frances looked at the many faces, and for a moment she was thirteen again, studying the crowd, looking for expressions of kindness and laugh lines and smiles, hoping that she and her brothers and sisters would find happy homes. Her heart beat faster, and she had to will herself to calm down.

She cleared her throat and began, as she’d been told to do, by explaining a little about the Children’s Aid Society and what it hoped to accomplish with the placing-out program. She went over the rules about treating each child like one of the family and making sure he or she was schooled and taken to church through the age of fourteen—just in case the onlookers hadn’t paid attention to the advertisements that had been sent out.

Then she introduced each child in turn, giving only names and ages.

Finally she invited the people to visit the stage and become acquainted with the children. “I hope there will be many of you here who will come to me and arrange to take a child,” she said.

A buzz like that from a busy beehive filled the room as husbands and wives looked over the children and discussed them with each other. A young woman, her hat askew, ran to the stage and held out her arms to Lizzie.

“Mama?” Lizzie asked, and went right into the woman’s arms.

“Oh, you precious child! You have to be ours!” the woman said as she hugged Lizzie.

“If you’d like to make arrangements to take her—” Frances began, but the woman didn’t let her finish the sentence.

“We would! Oh, we would! Look at those beautiful eyes. She’s so much like our own little girl would have been.” She lowered her voice and said, “We lost our baby last year.” The woman refused to let go of Lizzie for even a moment, even to let her husband hold her.

Another woman stepped up behind her. “I’m Mrs. Howard Smith,” she said. “My husband and I also came to get a little girl. The two-year-old may be spoken for, but what about that pretty child you called Nelly? She’s a darling. I tried to get her to come to me, but her brother won’t let go of her.”

“His name is George,” Frances said. “And Nelly’s other brother is Earl. They’re hoping that someone will want to adopt the three of them together.”

The woman gasped. “Three? It’s not likely anyone could afford to take three children.”

“They don’t want to be separated,” Frances said.

“It’s up to you to make the decision, isn’t it, and not them?” the woman asked. “My husband and I raised five boys. Now we’d love to have a little girl. We’d be good to her and school her, and take her to church on Sundays, just like you said.”

“Let me have a minute to talk to the children,” Frances said, but before she walked over to George, she stopped to speak to the committee members, who sat in chairs at the side of the room.

“What do you know about Mr. and Mrs. Howard Smith?” she asked.

A bald man pursed his lips and nodded. “Good people,” he said. “Raised a passel of boys, none of whom went bad. One son read the law and set up his practice down in St. Louis. Another’s working at the store with Howard.”

“They want Nelly Babcock,” Frances explained. “If they take Nelly, it will separate her from her two brothers. They all hoped to stay together.”

One of the committee members rolled her eyes. “Wouldn’t children ask for the moon, if they thought they could get it!”

Mrs. Judson smiled sympathetically at Frances. “We went through this last year. It’s a hard job to find homes for large groups of children. I’m always saddened when we have to put some of them on the next train.” She glanced at Mrs. Smith, who stood where Frances had left her. “I’ve known Rose Smith for years. She’s a good woman, and she’s always wanted a little girl.”