Read Ebook: The Rainbow Bridge by Fox Frances Margaret Merrill Frank T Illustrator

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Ebook has 917 lines and 46382 words, and 19 pages

"Well I should say yes," was the reply.

"Then I did too," observed Marian.

"Well," remarked Janey, "that's nothing to brag of; I don't suppose there's anybody in this Home that got here unless all their folks died dead. We are here because we don't belong anywhere else, and we are going to be given away to folks that'll take us, pretty soon."

That was too much for Marian. "Why, Janey Clark, what a talk!" she exclaimed, then turning, she ran back to the nursery.

"Nanna, Nanna!" she cried, "where's my mother?"

Mrs. Moore almost dropped a fretful baby at the question.

"Did I ever have a mother?" continued the child, whose dark blue eyes looked black she was so much in earnest. "I thought mothers were just only in singing, but Janey Clark had a mother and she died, and if Janey Clark had a mother, I guess I had one too that died."

The fretful baby was given to an assistant and Mrs. Moore took Marian in her lap. "What else did Janey tell you?" she asked.

"Well, Janey said that all of us childrens are going to be gived away to folks. Mrs. Moore, did all the childrens that live here have mothers that died?"

"Not all of them, Marian, some of the mothers are living and the children will go back to them: but your mother, little girl, will never come back for you. God took her away when He sent you to us. We keep little children here in our home until we find new fathers and mothers for them. Sometimes lovely mothers come here for little girls like you. How is it, Marian, do you want a mother?"

The child nodded her head and looked so pleased Mrs. Moore was disappointed. It would be hard enough to part with the child anyway, but to think she wished to go was surprising.

Two soft arms stole around Mrs. Moore's neck. "I'm going to have you for my mother," Marian explained, "and I'm going to live here always. I don't want to be gived away."

SHE GOES TO CHURCH

JANEY CLARK was taken ill one day and was carried to the hospital. When she returned months afterward, she had something to tell Marian.

"You want to get yourself adopted," was her advice. "I'm going to, first chance I get. When I was too well to stay in the hospital and not enough well to come home, a pretty lady came and said would I like to go to her house and stay until I was all better."

"Did she 'dopt you?" questioned Marian.

"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."

"I'm going with you," announced Marian. "I want you for my mother."

"But, don't you see, I have a little girl? What could I do with two?" remonstrated the woman. "There, there," she continued, as Marian began to sob piteously, "run in to dinner and some day I will come to see you again. Perhaps they may let you visit my little girl and me before long. Would you like that?"

"No, no," wailed Marian, "I want you for my mother."

"Come, Marian, sweetheart, let's go find Mrs. Moore," suggested the superintendent, taking her by force from the visitor, whose eyes filled with tears at the sight of little outstretched arms. For years afterwards there were times when that woman seemed to feel the clinging fingers of the Little Pilgrim who chose her for her mother. She might have taken her home. The next time she called to inquire for the child, Marian was gone.

An unexpected thing happened as Marian was borne away to the nursery. The stranger's little girl cried and would not be comforted because she couldn't stay and have dinner with the Little Pilgrims. She was still grieving over her first sorrow after Mrs. Moore had succeeded in winning back the smiles to the face of her precious Marian.

"Well, I know one sure thing," declared the Little Pilgrim as she raised her head from Mrs. Moore's shoulder and brushed away the tears. "I know that same mother will come and get me some time and take me home and then you will come and live with me--and won't it be lovely! Let's have some dinner, I'm hungry!"

Mrs. Moore smiled and sighed at the same time, but she ordered a luncheon for two served in the nursery and Marian's troubles vanished: also the luncheon.

The next time the superintendent saw the child, she was sitting on the nursery floor singing to the babies. He was surprised and pleased when he heard the sweet, clear voice and straightway sought Mrs. Moore.

"Let me take her Sunday," he suggested. "I didn't know our Marian was a singer."

"Are you going into the country?" asked the nurse.

"No, Mrs. Moore, not this time. We expect to have services in one of the largest churches right here in the city. We have made special arrangements and I shall take twenty-five of the best singers in the Home with me. Marian will have plenty of company."

"She is young," objected Mrs. Moore.

The superintendent laughed. "Petey Ross," said he, "was two years old when he made his first public appearance on the platform; Marian is nearly six."

"Yes," agreed Mrs. Moore, "that is true and I remember that Petey Ross was adopted and in less than a week after that first appearance. Marian," she continued, "come here, darling. Do you want to go to a big church with the children next Sunday and sing one of the songs you and I sing to the babies?"

"Yes, Nanna, what for?"

"Because the superintendent wishes you to. Every Sunday he takes some of our little boys and girls away to sing in the different churches, where he tells the people all about the Home for Little Pilgrims."

"Oh, yes, now I know," declared Marian. "Janey Clark used to go and sing. She said that was the way to get yourself adopted. I'd like to go if I don't have to get adopted and if Nanna may go too."

"All right, Marian, I will go," assented Mrs. Moore, "and nobody shall adopt you unless you wish it. Now run back to the babies. Little Ned and Jakey are quarreling over the elephant. Hurry, Marian, or its ears will be gone."

"She'll demand a salary in another year," remarked the superintendent, watching the little girl's successful management of the babies.

"I shouldn't know how to get along without her," said Mrs. Moore, "and yet it isn't right to let her grow up here."

Sunday morning it would have been hard to find a happier child than Marian anywhere in the big city. She had never been in a church before and quickly forgot her pretty white dress and curls in the wonder of it all. She sat on the platform, a radiant little Pilgrim among the twenty-five waifs. Soon the church was filled. After the opening exercises the service was turned over to the superintendent of the Home for Little Pilgrims. He made a few remarks, and then asked Marian to sing. Pleased by the friendly faces in the pews and encouraged by Mrs. Moore's presence, Marian sang timidly at first, then joyously as to the babies in the nursery.

"'I am Jesus' little lamb Happy all the day I am, Jesus loves me this I know For I'm His lamb.'"

As she went on with the song, the little girl was surprised to see many of the audience in tears. Even Mrs. Moore was wiping her eyes, although she smiled bravely and Marian knew she was not displeased. What could be the matter with the folks that bright Sunday morning? Janey Clark said everybody always cried at funerals. Perhaps it was a funeral. At the close of her song Marian sat down, much puzzled. After Johnnie Otis recited the poem he always recited on Visitors' Day at school, "The Orphan's Prayer," all the Little Pilgrims, Marian included, were asked to sing their chapel song. What was there sad about that, Marian wondered. She always sang it over and over to the babies to make them stop crying.

"It is all for the best, oh, my Father, All for the best, all for the best."

When the Little Pilgrims were seated, the superintendent made a speech to which Marian listened. For the first time in her life she knew the meaning of the Home for Little Pilgrims. She understood at last all that Janey Clark had tried to tell her. No wonder the people cried. Marian stared at the superintendent, longing and dreading to hear more. Story after story he told of wrecked homes and scattered families; of little children, homeless and friendless left to their fate upon the street.

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