Page:Weird Tales volume 33 number 04.djvu/119

 diet for all of them well into the next month's budget, and I was sure the board would discover it and give me a severe reprimand.

"I stopped short right there, thinking it over and wishing heartily that I could spank little Martha. But at that moment I I happened to glance down at the sawdust.

"There just under my foot was a small wad of paper money neatly folded around some silver change. My heart almost stopped, let me tell you, when I counted it—the exact amount, to a penny, for those ten tickets! I had the local paper advertise later for its loser, but no one claimed it. I've I've often speculated on the many ways it could have got there."

Mrs. Ellison's smile had faded a trifle, but now it came back, full of gentle tolerance. "Perhaps some drunken person dropped it," she suggested. "Surely, my dear matron, there's nothing supernatural about losing money on a circus ground!"

"Humph! Oh. Well maybe not." The plump orphanage head looked disgruntled but unconvinced. "There were other times," she pursued stoutly. "That time, for instance, when little Martha swallowed an open safety-pin, the way children will do if you don't watch them every minute!

"It was a terrible day last fall, when we had that ice storm, you remember. Wires were down, and we couldn't locate a doctor, with the poor little thing choking and crying, and that open pin jabbing into her throat with every move she'd make! I was frantic, and Miss Peebles, our resident nurse, was at her wit's end when all of a sudden this interstate bus broke down, spang in front of the Home gate"

Mrs. Ellison's eyes twinkled faintly. "And I suppose," she put in, teasingly, "there was a doctor for little Martha on the bus?"

matron did not return her smile, but surreptitiously mopped off a dew of moisture that sprang to her upper lip at the memory.

"A doctor?" she replied grimly. "There were eight—coming home from the state medical convention! One was an ear, eye, nose and throat specialist. Of course, he had that safety-pin out in a jiffy.

"What was so queer, the bus driver said it was battery trouble, with his new battery and wiring just checked carefully at the last station! Oh, it could happen, yes. I grant you, it could happen."

Mrs. Ellison chuckled. The chuckle seemed to annoy the matron, and she burst out afresh.

"There are dozens of minor incidents like that," she declared. "Martha is eternally finding things the other children will pass a hundred times. Pennies in the grass. A half-package of gum. A broken toy fire-engine, once, that some child must have thrown over the Home fence in a temper. Ask Martha where she gets them, and she'll invariably answer: 'Mommy gave it to me,' with those big eyes of hers as innocent as a lamb's. If I scold her and tell her to say she found it, she'll just say: 'Oh, yes—but Mommy told me where it was.'

"All that has made a vast impression on the other children. That's why they're a bit in awe of her—because they believe she's hourly guarded and pampered by a by a"

The matron floundered, reddening. Mrs. Ellison lifted one eyebrow humorously at the plump house-mother; saw the flush deepen in her round cheeks.

"By a ghost?" she finished, gently