Page:Weird Tales volume 33 number 04.djvu/116



WANT to adopt a child about seven years old," Mrs. Ellison had explained to the matron a few hours before.

Now, standing in the big bare yard of the Acipco County Orphanage, she studied each of the smaller girls who scampered past her. There was a chubby dark-curled mite seesawing near the tall iron gate, Mrs. Ellison noted.

A lovely cherub, she thought, who would make a wonderful little daughter for a childless widow like herself. Pumping madly in one of the swings was another, brown-eyed and laughing as she herself had been at that age.

So many motherless children, herded together like livestock and perforce treated almost as such—how was one to make the great decision that would change one's own life as well as the child's for ever after today?

"Good Heavens! I'm shopping for a daughter," the tall gentle-eyed woman mused guiltily. "How inhuman! It it should be the other way 'round, if only a child had vision enough to select."

Her thought snapped off like a twig. Something was tugging at her skirt with timid insistence, and she peered down, startled to find a thin homely little girl looking up at her. The penetrating blue eyes were much too large for that sallow sensitive face. Two mouse-colored braids hung over narrow shoulders against the starched collar of her orphanage uniform, and the arm that reached up at Mrs. Ellison was match-thin and peppered with freckles like the face and neck.

I don't believe I've ever seen a more unattractive child, was the woman's first thought. But then the little girl smiled, and her face lighted slowly as a candle in a dark room. It was a sweet strange smile, full of wistfulness and yet the paradox of a quiet knowledge.

"Are you the lady my mommy sent for me?" her small voice piped. It was a timid voice, rather vague like the blue eyes, but oddly compelling for all that.

Mrs. Ellison knelt down, smiling. Her hands moved, smoothing the ratty braids. The child wouldn't look so homely with careful attention, her thoughts veered, while she murmured aloud:

"I don't know, sweetheart. Has your mommy gone to Heaven?"

The child regarded her gravely for a moment. Then she shook her head.

"No, ma'm. My mommy comes to see me any time I want her to. She talks to me every night, an'"

At that instant the matron bustled up, starched and puffing, a tiny frown of annoyance creasing her smooth