Mrs. Lane was struck dumb. She had no idea of making a servant of Bird, but on the other hand she knew that legal adoption would mean to give Bird a like share with her own boys, and as what little they had, or might expect, came from her husband’s people, this she could not promise at once.
“I meant—to treat her just like my little girl that died—but”—poor Mrs. Lane got more and more mixed up—“I haven’t asked Joshua about the adoptin’ business—it’s so lately happened, we’d not got that far, you see.”
“Yes, mum, I see,” said the fat man, drawing his lips together shrewdly, “yourself has a warm heart, but others, yer own boys likely, may give it a chill some day, and then where’s Bird? No, mum, the girl ’ll have an easier berth with her own, I fancy, and not have to bend her back drawin’ and fetchin’ water, either,—we’ve it set quite handy.”
This was said with withering sarcasm for, unfortunately, at that moment, Bird could be seen lugging in a heavy water bucket from the well, something she had been warned not to do, and yet did unthinkingly, for to-day she walked as in a dream.
Mrs. Lane saw that in reality she was helpless, unless she appealed to Bird herself, and to rouse the child’s sensitive spirit she knew would be not only foolish but wicked, so for once Lauretta Ann Lane sat silent and with bowed head, only saying with a choking voice, “I will tell her after—supper—and you’ll let—us write—to her, I suppose, and have her—back to visit if she gets piney for Lammy,—they’ve been like twin brother and sister ever since Janey died.”
“I will that, ma’am, and I’ll say more; if within the year she don’t content herself and settle down and grieves for yer, and yer see it clear in that time to adopt her fair and square, and guarantee to do by her as I will,—you’ll get the chance.”
O’More stretched his legs, stiff with sitting, and jerked his half-burned cigar into the bushes, while at the same moment Oliver and Nellis, Lammy’s big brothers who worked in Milltown, rode up on their wheels and the bell rang for supper.
******
No one but Bird ever knew what Mrs. Lane said to her that night, during the sad hours that she held the child in her arms in the great rocking-chair that had soothed to sleep three generations of Lane babies. Perhaps it soothed poor Bird, too, only she did not know it then; yet she fell asleep, after a storm of crying, with her arms around Twinkle, the terrier, as soon as Mrs. Lane had put her to bed, promising to come back from Aunt Jimmy’s early in the morning to awaken her, for her uncle was to take the nine o’clock train from the Centre.
As Mrs. Lane collected, in a valise, the few clothes that made up Bird’s wardrobe, she felt broken-hearted indeed, but she could not but realize that if the little girl must go, the quicker the better, and who knew what might turn up, for Mrs. Lane was always hopeful. But Lammy, poor boy, could not see one bright spot in the darkness. It was with difficulty that his father could keep the child, usually so gentle, from flying at O’More; he stormed and begged and finally, completely exhausted, fled to the stuffy attic where he fell asleep, pillowed by some hard ears of seed corn.