Free In the Land of the Long White Cloud by Sarah Lark

friendly hand soothingly on her arm. “I can even understand what might push a young woman to take this step, and we in no way disparage Lady Brennan’s work. The reverend would hardly let her use his rectory otherwise.”
    Helen got a hold of herself a little. So no dressing down? But what did the Thornes want, then?
    Almost reluctantly, the reverend spoke up. “I know that my next question borders on the indiscreet, and I hardly dare ask it. Now, Helen, has anything come of your…ahem, application with Lady Brennan?”
    Helen bit her lip. Why, for heaven’s sake, did the reverend want to know that? Did he know anything about Howard O’Keefe that she needed to know? Had she been—Lord help her—taken in by a swindler? She would never get over a shame like that.
    “I’ve answered a letter,” she said properly. “Otherwise, nothing has happened.”
    The reverend briefly calculated the time that had passed since the advertisement appeared. “Of course not, Helen, that would be as good as impossible. For one, it would have taken more than a good tailwind on the way over. For another, the young man would practically have to have been waiting for the ship at the pier and would have had to give his letter straight to the next captain. The usual post route takes a lot longer, believe me. I exchange letters regularly with a fellow pastor in Dunedin.”
    “But…but if you know that, what do you want from me?” Helen blurted out. “If something develops between Mr. O’Keefe and myself, it could take a year or longer. For now…”
    “We thought we might speed things up a bit,” Mrs. Thorne explained. The considerably more practical-minded half of the couple, she got straight to the point. “What the reverend really wanted to ask was…did this Mr. O’Keefe’s letter touch your heart? Could you really see yourself making such a trip for the sake of this man and burning all the bridges behind you?”
    Helen shrugged. “The letter was so lovely,” she confessed and could not stop a smile from playing on her lips. “I read it again and again,every night. And, yes, I could see myself starting a new life overseas. It’s my only chance for a family. And I pray that God will lead me…that He was the one who had me read this notice…that He was the one who had me receive this letter and not another.”
    Mrs. Thorne nodded. “Perhaps God really is directing things just as you think, child,” she said softly. “To wit, my husband has a suggestion for you.”

    When Helen struck out for the Greenwoods’ from the Thornes’ home an hour later, she did not know whether she should dance for joy or square her shoulders against her own audacity. Her stomach fluttered with butterflies because everything was now set: there was no going back. In approximately eight weeks her ship would leave for New Zealand.
    “It’s about the orphan girls whom Mrs. Greenwood and her committee are bent on sending overseas.” Helen could still hear every word of Reverend Thorne’s explanation. “Half of them are children—the oldest is thirteen, the youngest just turned eleven. The girls are already scared half to death by the prospect of taking a position here in London. And now they’re to be shipped all the way to New Zealand, to work for total strangers! Of course, it doesn’t help that the boys in the orphanage don’t have anything better to do than tease the girls. They talk all day about sinking ships and pirates who kidnap children. The littlest is utterly convinced she’ll end up in some cannibal’s stomach, and the oldest has some crazy notion that she might be sold as some oriental sultan’s playmate.”
    Helen laughed, but the Thornes remained straight-faced.
    “We find it funny too, but the girls believe it,” said Mrs. Thorne with a sigh. “Even disregarding the dangers of such a voyage, the route to New Zealand is traveled from beginning to end exclusively by sailing ships since it’s too far a stretch for