P.S. Gordon Hallock has evaporated into thin air. Not a word for three
weeks; no candy or stuffed animals or tokimentoes of any description.
What on earth do you suppose has become of that attentive young man?
July 13.
Dearest Judy:
Hark to the glad tidings!
This being the thirty-first day of Punch's month, I telephoned to his
two patronesses, as nominated in the bond, to arrange for his return. I
was met by an indignant refusal. Give up their sweet little volcano
just as they are getting it trained not to belch forth fire? They are
outraged that I can make such an ungrateful request. Punch has accepted
their invitation to spend the summer.
The dressmaking is still going on. You should hear the machines whir
and the tongues clatter in the sewing room. Our most cowed, apathetic,
spiritless little orphan cheers up and takes an interest in life when
she hears that she is to possess three perfectly private dresses of her
own, and each a different color, chosen by herself. And you should see
how it encourages their sewing ability. Even the little ten-year-olds
are bursting into seamstresses. I wish I could devise an equally
effective way to make them take an interest in cooking. But our
kitchen is extremely uneducative. You know how hampering it is to one's
enthusiasm to have to prepare a bushel of potatoes at once.
I think you've heard me mention the fact that I should like to divide up
my kiddies into ten nice little families, with a nice comfortable house
mother over each? If we just had ten picturesque cottages to put them
in, with flowers in the front yard and rabbits and kittens and
puppies and chickens in the back, we should be a perfectly presentable
institution, and wouldn't be ashamed to have these charity experts come
visiting us.
Thursday.
I started this letter three days ago, was interrupted to talk to a
potential philanthropist (fifty tickets to the circus), and have not had
time to pick up my pen since. Betsy has been in Philadelphia for three
days, being a bridesmaid for a miserable cousin. I hope that no more of
her family are thinking of getting married, for it's most upsetting to
the J. G. H.
While there, she investigated a family who had applied for a child. Of
course we haven't a proper investigating plant, but once in a while,
when a family drops right into our arms, we do like to put the business
through. As a usual thing, we work with the State Charities' Aid
Association. They have a lot of trained agents traveling about the
State, keeping in touch with families who are willing to take children,
and with asylums that have them to give. Since they are willing to
work for us, there is no slightest use in our going to the expense
of peddling our own babies. And I do want to place out as many as are
available, for I firmly believe that a private home is the best thing
for the child, provided, of course, that we are very fussy about the
character of the homes we choose. I don't require rich foster parents,
but I do require kind, loving, intelligent parents. This time I think
Betsy has landed a gem of a family. The child is not yet delivered or
the papers signed, and of course there is always danger that they may
give a sudden flop, and splash back into the water.
Ask Jervis if he ever heard of J. F. Bretland of Philadelphia. He seems
to move in financial circles. The first I ever heard of him was a
letter addressed to the "Supt. John Grier Home, Dear Sir,"--a curt,
typewritten, businesslike letter, from an AWFULLY businesslike lawyer,
saying that his wife had determined to adopt a baby girl of attractive
appearance and good health between the ages of two and three years. The
child must be an orphan of American stock, with unimpeachable heredity,
and no relatives to interfere. Could I furnish one as required and
oblige, yours truly, J. F. Bretland?
By way of reference he mentioned "Bradstreets." Did you ever hear of
anything so funny? You would think he was opening a charge account at a
nursery, and inclosing an order from our seed catalogue.
We began our usual investigation by mailing a reference blank to a
clergyman in Germantown, where the J. F. B.'s reside.
Does he own any property?
Does he pay his bills?
Is he kind to animals?
Does he attend church?
Does he quarrel with his wife? And a dozen other impertinent questions.
We evidently picked a clergyman with a sense of humor. Instead of
answering in laborious detail, he wrote up and down and across the
sheet, "I wish they'd adopt me!"
This looked promising, so B. Kindred obligingly dashed out to Germantown
as soon as the wedding breakfast was over. She is developing the most
phenomenal detective instinct. In the course of a social call she can
absorb from the chairs and tables a family's entire moral history.
She returned from Germantown bursting with enthusiastic details.
Mr. J. F. Bretland is a wealthy and influential citizen, cordially loved
by his friends and deeply hated by his enemies (discharged employees,
who do not hesitate to say that he is a HAR-RD man). He is a little
shaky in his attendance at church, but his wife seems regular, and he
gives money.
She is a charming, kindly, cultivated gentlewoman, just out of a
sanatorium after a year of nervous prostration. The doctor says that
what she needs is some strong interest in life, and advises adopting
a child. She has always longed to do it, but her hard husband has
stubbornly refused. But finally, as always, it is the gentle, persistent
wife who has triumphed, and hard husband has been forced to give in.
Waiving his own natural preference for a boy, he wrote, as above, the
usual request for a blue-eyed girl.
Mrs. Bretland, with the firm intention of taking a child, has been
reading up for years, and there is no detail of infant dietetics
that she does not know. She has a sunny nursery, with a southwestern
exposure, all ready. And a closet full of surreptitiously gathered
dolls! She has made the clothes for them herself,--she showed them to
Betsy with the greatest pride,--so you can understand the necessity for
a girl.
She has just heard of an excellent English trained nurse that she can
secure, but she isn't sure but that it would be better to start with a
French nurse, so that the child can learn the language before her vocal
cords are set. Also, she was extremely interested when she heard that
Betsy was a college woman. She couldn't make up her mind whether to
send the baby to college or not. What was Betsy's honest opinion? If the
child were Betsy's own daughter, would Betsy send her to college?
All this would be funny if it weren't so pathetic; but really I can't
get away from the picture of that poor lonely woman sewing those doll
clothes for the little unknown girl that she wasn't sure she could have.
She lost her own two babies years ago, or, rather, she never had them;
they were never alive.
You can see what a good home it's going to be. There's lots of love
waiting for the little mite, and that is better than all the wealth
which, in this case, goes along.
But the problem now is to find the child, and that isn't easy. The J. F.
Bretlands are so abominably explicit in their requirements. I have
just the baby boy to give them; but with that closetful of dolls, he is
impossible. Little Florence won't do--one tenacious parent living. I've
a wide variety of foreigners with liquid brown eyes--won't do at all.
Mrs. Bretland is a blonde, and daughter must resemble her. I have
several sweet little mites with unspeakable heredity, but the Bretlands
want six generations of church-attending grandparents, with a colonial
governor at the top. Also I have a darling little curly-headed girl (and
curls are getting rarer and rarer), but illegitimate. And that seems to
be an unsurmountable barrier in the eyes of adopting parents, though,
as a matter of fact, it makes no slightest difference in the child.
However, she won't do. The Bretlands hold out sternly for a marriage
certificate.
There remains just one child out of all these one hundred and seven that
appears available. Our little Sophie's father and mother were killed in
a railroad accident, and the only reason she wasn't killed was because
they had just left her in a hospital to get an abscess cut out of her
throat. She comes from good common American stock, irreproachable and
uninteresting in every way. She's a washed-out, spiritless, whiney
little thing. The doctor has been pouring her full of his favorite
cod-liver oil and spinach, but he can't get any cheerfulness into her.
However, individual love and care does accomplish wonders in institution
children, and she may bloom into something rare and beautiful after a
few months' transplanting. So I yesterday wrote a glowing account of her
immaculate family history to J. F. Bretland, offering to deliver her in
Germantown.
This morning I received a telegram from J. F. B. Not at all! He does not
purpose to buy any daughter sight unseen. He will come and inspect the
child in person at three o'clock on Wednesday next.
Oh dear, if he shouldn't like her! We are now bending all our energies
toward enhancing that child's beauty--like a pup bound for the dog
show. Do you think it would be awfully immoral if I rouged her cheeks a
suspicion? She is too young to pick up the habit.
Heavens! what a letter! A million pages written without a break. You can
see where my heart is. I'm as excited over little Sophie's settling in
life as though she were my own darling daughter.
Respectful regards to the president.
SAL. McB.
Dear Gordon:
That was an obnoxious, beastly, low-down trick not to send me a cheering
line for four weeks just because, in a period of abnormal stress I once
let you go for three. I had really begun to be worried for fear you'd
tumbled into the Potomac. My chicks would miss you dreadfully; they love
their uncle Gordon. Please remember that you promised to send them a
donkey.
Please also remember that I'm a busier person than you. It's a lot
harder to run the John Grier Home than the House of Representatives.
Besides, you have more efficient people to help.
This isn't a letter; it's an indignant remonstrance. I'll write
tomorrow--or the next day.