Circle of Love(35)

Frances sighed and said, “Thank you. I’ll take your advice.” With an aching heart she explained to George and Earl, “I can’t take the chance on finding people who’d be able to adopt three children. I was told that the Smiths would be very good to Nelly and give her a happy home.”

Earl’s face was drained of color. “Will we be able to visit Nelly? Can we see her often?”

“I don’t know,” Frances said. Tears were streaming down George’s cheeks. Nelly patted George’s face and looked puzzled.

“Why you crying?” Nelly asked.

George’s defenses broke down completely, and he began to sob.

Frances wrapped her arms around all three children. She knew how much sorrow they were feeling. But she also knew that this could be Nelly’s only chance to find a loving family. “I’ll give you the Smiths’ address so that you can write to Nelly,” she told the boys.

Giving them time to say goodbye to their little sister and steeling herself to their heartbroken tears, Frances reluctantly took Nelly from George and carried her to Mrs. Smith.

Mrs. Smith’s smile lit the room. “Oh, darling Nelly, you’re going to be mine!” she cried, but Nelly, realizing what was happening, stretched out her arms to her brothers and began to wail at the top of her lungs.

Frances, forcing back her own tears, handed out papers to a number of eager foster parents, but occasionally there was an eruption of tears on the stage, and she hurried to try to solve the problems.

“Nobody picked me!” Margaret sobbed. She clutched her rabbit tightly.

“They’ve just begun meeting the children,” Frances told her. She pulled out a handkerchief and wiped Margaret’s eyes. “Smile,” Frances said. “You’re such a dear girl, when people see that happy smile, someone is bound to want you.”

Frances paused. At the back of the stage Eddie was entertaining a group of fascinated listeners by acting out the exploits on the train. “So there stood the robber, with his gun pointed straight at me,” Eddie said. He raised and pointed an imaginary handgun at a woman, who gave a little jump and squealed. “But he wasn’t going to get the best of me—not Eddie Marsh, who knew his way around the streets of New York City from the time he learned to walk.”

Chuckling at Eddie’s performance, Frances walked on.

Although many of the children were surrounded by smiling or curious adults, Aggie sat miserably alone on her stool at one side of the stage. With an aching heart Frances saw Aggie glance hopefully at two of the couples who came near, but none of them approached her.

Frances started toward Aggie, but a middle-aged couple unwittingly stepped in front of her. They stopped next to Aggie and examined her as though she were a bolt of cloth.

“She’s a strapping big girl,” the woman said to her husband. “She’s not much to look at, and that red hair’s a sight, but I’m sure she can handle plenty of hard work.”

The woman suddenly took Aggie’s upper arm in her roughened hands and squeezed the muscle.

Her face mottled red with anger, Aggie jerked her arm away. “Don’t touch me!” she shouted at the woman.

“Well, I never!” the woman exclaimed. “Hard worker or not, I don’t want a rude child like you!”

As the woman and her husband stomped off the stage, Frances put an arm around Aggie’s shoulders. “Pay no attention to people like that,” she said.

“I don’t want to go with them,” Aggie insisted.

“You don’t have to,” Frances told her.

“I—I don’t want to be kitchen help. I want somebody to love me.”

“Somebody will.”

Aggie seemed to shrink inside herself. “Maybe Mrs. Marchlander was right. Maybe no one can love me.”

“Aggie, dear, forget Mrs. Marchlander. She was wrong,” Frances said. “Forget these people who were rude to you. I wouldn’t have let you go with them in any case. You weren’t sent here to be an unpaid worker. You were sent to be part of a loving family. Look for the family who’ll choose you. If you see people coming to talk to you, smile at them. I know you must have a beautiful smile.”

“Smile just so they’ll choose me? That’s like begging. I can’t do that! I can’t!”

“Then smile because you’d choose them. Can you try?”

Aggie lifted a woebegone face to Frances. “I guess I can try,” she said.

Frances was needed to help a young couple fill out papers for Philip, so she left Aggie, hoping for the best.

Caroline Jane went willingly with a pleasant young man and woman. She tugged at Frances’s skirt and whispered, “They’ll take care of me, and my father won’t be able to find me, will he?”