People Like That: A Novel

by Kate Langley Bosher

As if groping, the eyes looking into mine made effort to understand, then turned away. "You can't find her—now. It's—too late. She was let go—to work—and she—didn't know. She come—from a little town—to a big one. And nobody—told her—what might happen. My little Nora—who's going to tell her?"

With violent effort, the figure on the bed attempted to sit up, and the twitching hands were flung one on either side, then again they clutched mine. "Why don't God—let me—take her—with me? Promise me—you won't forget—my little Nora! Won't let them—put her—in an orphan home. Promise me—you'll watch—"

Gaspingly she lay back on the pillows, but her eyes held mine.
"Promise—"

"I promise I will not—forget." Before God and a dying woman I was pledging protection for a homeless child. My voice broke and then steadied. "I promise—and I will watch."

As if that which held had snapped, the tossing head lay quiet, and out of the face fear faded, and into it, as softly as widens dawn at break of day, came peace. The sobbing in the corner of the room had ceased, and through the thin walls I could hear Selwyn's low tones as he told stumblingly to the child a story that was keeping her quiet, and I knew he, too, was on new thresholds; he, too, was entering unknown worlds.

"Tell her—" Flame-spent, the eyes again opened and this time looked at Miss White. "Tell her—why I—don't want— They mean—to be good—but—people like that—don't know how—people like us—"

Martha White thrust her handkerchief up her sleeve, cleared her throat, and straightened her wide and rustling apron. "She's been trying to tell me all day that she didn't want Nora to be put in an orphan asylum, and yet there's nobody to take her. All her people are too poor to add another child to their families." She came closer and lowered her voice that it might reach no one but me, and with her shoulders made movement toward the bed, with her hands to the man and woman still close together in tearless silence in the corner. "You know how people like that are. They judge everything by the few cases that come within their knowledge, and—"

"Most of us do. What does she know about asylums that prejudices her so?"

"Little, except she's come across some girls who came out of them who have gone wrong, and she thinks it's because they were kept too shut off from outside life, and told too little of temptations and real truths and—and things like that. What she means is that she thinks those who manage asylums and homes try to keep the girls innocent through ignorance, and when they're turned out to go to work they don't understand the dangers that are ahead. Some grown-ups forget that young people crave young ways and pretty things and good times, and that they've got to be taught about what they don't understand."

"Little Etta—Etta Blake was an orphan. She was like a bird—in a cage. When she—got out— If only—they had—told her—" The voice from the bed was strangely stronger, and the fingers, still twisted into mine, made feeble pressure.