Free What the Heart Keeps by Rosalind Laker Page A

Minnie.
    “ Don’t question me,” the woman retorted. “My reports are not for the likes of you.”
    Before the girls left, Lisa was able to gather that the majority had been in domestic service in workhouses and institutions, and she could guess how glad the authorities were to get rid of them in order to fill the vacancies with others desperate for work. She gave several of them a list of the names of those with whom she had come to Canada, requesting that if they met up with them to say how much she would like a letter. She had long since come to the conclusion that those who would have written had decided she had gone to work elsewhere as they had done. She could well imagine Rosie in particular, supposing her to be favoured because she had sought to educate herself by extensive reading. How wrong that supposition was.
    The irony of it came home to her still further when she found the state of the girls’ quarters after their departure. Filthy rags and unemptied slops and rubbish of all kinds had to be cleared away before she could start washing and cleaning the rooms. It made her more grateful than ever for the tiny box-room that Miss Lapthorne allowed her to occupy as a mark of her promotion to deputy’s assistant.
    Everything was spick and span again when she was giving a final polish to the attic windows and saw Miss Drayton departing once more for England, with Miss Lapthorne bidding her goodbye. Caught off guard, Lisa was suddenly assailed with a longing for a glimpse of English hills and an English sky, but she crushed it down and diverted her mind elsewhere. From the time she had first been taken into the Leeds orphanage, she had learned to live each day as it came and not to waste time in useless regrets.
    Winter set in and the snows came. On the first day of the New Year of 1904, Lisa reached her fifteenth birthday. Miss Lapthorne kindly made her a cake. It was the first celebratory delicacy she had ever had.
    Miss Drayton returned in the spring with a party in tow, and the pattern of coming and going was resumed. Lisa knew by now that the majority of the children went to faraway rural areas in Ontario. According to Miss Lapthorne, Mrs. Grant was responsible for checking the homes into which the children were to be received, but as it was impossible for her to meet every family personally, because of the distances involved, others were designated by her and the collective reports presented for Miss Drayton’s final approval. The fact that there never seemed to be any delay in the distribution of the children caused Lisa much anxiety. From all she had seen and observed since being drawn into the Herbert Drayton Memorial Society, she felt they were simply being got rid of as quickly as possible. The thought of their being exploited or treated cruelly haunted her.
    In desperation she went to see Mr. Lawson, who had adopted Gertie and whom she knew to be a good man. He listened to her patiently and then dismissed her worries out of hand, having implicit faith in the society.
    “ Take my own case, for example,” he said. “My wife and I were extremely disappointed not to be able to adopt Amy. Mrs. Lawson had taken the child to her heart. But when it was explained to us that Amy had the chance to rejoin a sister, already adopted, we had no wish to stand in her way.”
    “ But that wasn’t true!” Lisa burst out. “Amy had nobody in the world! Her whole family was wiped out by cholera.”
    “ All except one sister,” he corrected pedantically. “You cannot be expected to know the complete background of every child passing through the society for adoption. Be assured that everything is being done for the best. I shall not mention your visit if I should see Miss Drayton again. It would hurt her feelings to know she was being doubted. At the same time I commend your concern for the weak and helpless. I thank God there are no grounds for such misgivings.”
    She returned to Sherbourne Street in a fury of