“A society like The Hidden Home can play the game coming and going. People go there and pay to have babies that will be released to the Home for adoption. A good many times the mother tries to arrange with the Home to support the child. She thinks she’s going to work and keep on making payments. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred she can’t do it.”
The little old man stopped and cleared his throat nervously. His eyes peered furtively over the tops of the reading glasses which had slid down on his nose, studying the faces of his listeners in the hopes that he could read their reactions in their facial expressions.
“Go on,” Mason said.
“That’s all there is. If the homes are on the square, they wait until the mother quits payments before they do anything about it, but sometimes they take a gamble.”
“What do you mean by taking a gamble?” Mason asked.
“They just go ahead and release the child for adoption… You see, a very young baby gets a better price than an older child.”
“Why?” Mason asked.
“After a child is four or five years old — old enough to remember about life in the Home — it realizes that it’s been adopted. Most people never tell children they’ve been adopted. They want the child to look on them as its real father and mother.”
“All right,” Mason said. “How about Byrl Gailord?”
“They took a gamble with her — and they lost.”