“Pore Freddie,” she said, “I wish you could stay here all the time and play with the other little ones.”
The child looked up at her with wondering eyes. “I kin stay till mamma comes back,” he answered.
“But, Freddie dear, mamma won’t come back any more. She’s”—the woman hesitated—“she’s in heaven.”
“I want my mamma to come back,” moaned the child. “I don’t want her to stay in heaven.”
“But you mustn’t cry, Freddie; an’, some day, you kin go an’ see mamma.”
The child’s curiosity got the better of his grief. He asked, “Is heaven far, Mis’ Davis?”
“Yes, dear, awful far,” she answered. But she was wrong. Heaven is not far from the warm heart and tender hands of a good woman.
The child’s head drooped, and he drowsed in her arms.
“Put him to bed, Melissy—pore little fellow,” said her husband in husky tones. He had been listening and watching them around the edge of his paper. The child slept on, while the woman undressed him and laid him in the bed.
On the morrow the women dropped in one by one, until a half-dozen or more were there, to plan the boy’s future. They were all poor, and most of them had families of their own. But all hoped that there might be some plan devised whereby Margaret’s boy might find a refuge without going to the orphans’ asylum, an institution which is the detestation of women. Mrs. Davis, in expressing her feelings, expressed those of all the others: “I hate so to think of the pore little feller goin’ to one o’ them childern’s homes. The boys goin’ around in them there drab clothes o’ theirs allus look like pris’ners to me, an’ they ain’t much better off.”
“An’ then childern do learn so much weekedness in them places from the older ones,” put in another.
“Oh, as fur that matter, he’ll learn devilment soon enough anywhere,” snapped Mrs. Warren, “with that owdacious father o’ his before him. I wouldn’t take the child by no means, though his mother an’ me was friends, fur blood’s bound to tell, an’ with sich blood as he’s got in him I don’t know what he’ll come to, an’ I’m shore I don’t want to be a-raisin’ no gallus-birds.”
The women felt rather relieved that Mrs. Warren so signally washed her hands of Freddie. That was one danger he had escaped. The woman in question had, as she said, been a close friend of Margaret’s, and, as such, an aider in her habits of intemperance. It had been apprehended that her association with the mother might lead her to take the child.
“I’d like to take Freddie myself,” Mrs. Davis began again, “but with my five, an’ John out o’ work half the time, another mouth to feed an’ another pair o’ feet to cover would mean a whole lot. Though I do think that ef I was dead an’ my childern was sent to that miserable orphans’ home, I’d turn over in my grave.”
“It’s a pity we don’t know some good family that ain’t got no childern that ’ud take him an’ bring him up as their own son,” said a little woman who took The Hearthside.
“Sich people ain’t growin’ on trees no place about Dexter,” Mrs. Warren sniffed.
“Well, I’m sure I’ve read of sich things. Ef the child was in a book it ’ud happen to him, but he ain’t. He’s a flesh and blood youngster an’ a-livin’ in Dexter.”
“You couldn’t give us no idee what to do, could you, Mis’ Austin?”
“Lord love you, Mis’ Davis, I’ve jest been a-settin’ here purty nigh a-thinkin’ my head off, but I ain’t seen a gleam of light yit. You know how I feel an’ jest how glad I’d be to do something, but then my man growls about the three we’ve got.”
“That’s jest the way with my man,” said the little woman who took her ideas of life from the literature in The Hearthside. “He allus says that pore folks oughtn’t to have so many childern.”
“Well, it’s a blessin’ that Margar’t didn’t have no more, fur goodness knows it’s hard enough disposin’ o’ this one.”
Just then a tap came at Mrs. Davis’s door, and she opened it to admit Miss Hester Prime.
“I’m ruther late gittin’ here,” said the newcomer, “but I’ve been a-neglectin’ my work so in the last couple o’ days that I’ve had a power of it to do today to ketch up.”
“Oh, we’re so glad you’ve come!” said one of the women. “Mebbe you kin help us out of our fix. We’re in sich a fix about little Freddie.”
“We don’t want to send the pore little dear to the childern’s home,” broke in another.
“It’s sich an awful place fur young childern—”
“An’ they do look so pitiful—”
“An’ learn so much weekedness.”
And, as is the manner of women in council, they all began talking at once, pouring into the newcomer’s ears all the suggestions and objections, hopes and fears, that had been made or urged during their conference.
To it all Miss Hester listened, and there was a soft glow on her face the while; but then she had been walking, which may account for the flush. The child, all unconscious that his destiny was being settled, was playing with two of the little Davises at the other end of the room. The three days of good food, good treatment, and pleasant surroundings had told on him, and he looked less forlorn and more like the child that he was. He was clean. His brown eyes were sparkling with amusement, and his brown hair was brushed up into the damp “roach” so dear to a woman’s heart. He was, thus, a far less forbidding sight than on
