"No, of course not, or I could have stayed at her house and she would be my mother. She didn't want to keep me but only to borrow me so the children she is aunt to would know about Little Pilgrims and how lucky it is not to be one their own selves. And at her house," continued Janey, "if you liked something they had for dinner pretty well, you could have a second helping, if you would say please. You better believe I said it when there was ice cream. And the children she was aunt to took turns dividing chocolate candy with me, and the only trouble was they gave me too much and made me sick most all the time. What do you think! One day a girl said she wished I was a little cripple like a boy that was there once, because she liked to be kind to little cripples and wash their faces. Wasn't she just lovely? Oh, Marian, I want to be adopted and have a mother like that lady and a room all my own and everything."
"But I would rather live with Mrs. Moore," objected Marian. "I've picked her out for my mother."
"All right for you, stay here if you want to," agreed Janey, "but I'm not, you just wait and see."
Janey Clark was adopted soon after and when Marian was invited to visit her, she changed her mind about living forever in the Home for Little Pilgrims. Mrs. Moore promised to choose a mother for her from the many visitors to the Home, yet she and Marian proved hard to suit.
"I want a mother just like my Nanna," said Marian to the superintendent, who agreed to do all he could to find one. In spite of his help Marian seemed likely to stay in the Home, not because no one wanted her but because the child objected to the mothers who offered themselves. All these months the little girl was so happy and contented the superintendent said she was like a sunbeam among the Little Pilgrims and if the school-teacher had some ideas that he and Mrs. Moore didn't share, she smiled and said nothing.
In time, Marian talked of the mother she wished to have as she did of heaven—of something beautiful but too indefinite and far away to be more than a dream. One never-to-be-forgotten morning, the dream took shape. A woman visited the Home, leading a little girl by the hand. A woman so lovely the face of the dullest Little Pilgrim lighted as she passed. It was not so much the bright gold of her hair, nor the blue eyes that attracted the children, but the way she smiled and the way she spoke won them all.
She was the mother for whom Marian had waited. It didn't occur to the child that the woman might not want her.
It was noon before the strangers were through visiting the chapel, the schoolroom, the nursery and the dormitories. Like a shadow Marian had followed them over the building, fearing to lose sight of her chosen mother. On reaching the dining-room the woman and child, with the superintendent, stood outside the door where they watched the Little Pilgrims march in to dinner. Noticing Marian, the superintendent asked her why she didn't go to the table, and Marian tried to tell him but couldn't speak a word. The man was about to send her in the dining-room when he caught the appealing look on the child's face. At that moment the stranger turned. Marian seized her dress and the woman, glancing down, saw the dear little one and stooping, kissed her.
The superintendent smiled but Marian began to cry as the woman tried ever so gently to release her dress from the small, clinging fingers.
"We must go now," the stranger said, "so good-bye, dear child."