“Oh, no, dear! I haven’t any mother, any more than you have; but I have a dear, dear father and two brothers——”
“Well, you see,” interrupted the eager little one, “some of the ladies what come for the findlings just fall right in love with them. The matron lady always dresses ’em up real pretty, and curls their hair, and makes ’em look as pretty as they can look.
“You see,” she added, in an explanatory way, “I was so nawful thin—scrawny, the matron said—the mother-ladies what comed to find a findling didn’t care much for me.”
Dorothy could understand that it was the pretty, plump children who would mostly attract those lonely hearts reaching out for the babies that God had denied them.
“You see,” pursued Celia, “Mrs. Hogan wanted a young one that could work. She told the matron so. I was gettin’ so big that they had to let somebody have me pretty soon, or I’d have to go to the Girls’ School—an’ the matron said ‘God forbid!’ so I guess the Girls’ School ain’t a very nice place for little girls to go,” and Celia shook her head wisely.
“But, you see, I hoped an’ hoped that one of the cuddly ladies would take me. I seen one carry Maisie—she was my little friend—right out of the Findling, and down the steps, and into a great, big, be-youtiful ortermobile. She hugged her tight all the way, too, an’ I think—she cried over her. The matron said she’d lost a little girl that looked like Maisie.
“But I didn’t look like nobody that was lost—not at all. They all said when they looked at me: ‘She’s jes’ the cutest little thing!’ But somehow they didn’t love me.”
“Oh, my dear!” cried Dorothy, gathering Celia into her arms again. “I don’t see why all the lonesome mothers that came there to the asylum didn’t fall in love with you right away!”
There was a great stamping upon the porch and the door flew open. Dorothy saw that the whole world outside seemed to be one vast snowbank. Mrs. Hogan, puffing and blowing, in knee boots and her man’s outfit, was covered with snow.
“That Jim Bentley’s gone home—bad ’cess t’ him. Though ’tis me saves a supper thereby. An’ he niver got the hoss up at all, at all!” she cried, wiping her red face on a towel hanging by the sink, and then shedding her outside garments, boots and all, in a heap by the hot stove.