Audrey

A word or phrase which is as common and familiar as our hand may, in some

one minute of time, take on a significance and present a face so keen and

strange that it is as if we had never met it before. An Orphan Court!

Again he said the words to himself, and then aloud. No doubt the law did

its best for the fatherless and motherless, for such waifs and strays as

that which lay beside him. When it bound out children, it was most

emphatic that they should be fed and clothed and taught; not starved or

beaten unduly, or let to grow up ignorant as negroes. Sometimes the law

was obeyed, sometimes not.

The roses in the east bloomed again, and the pink of their petals melted

into the clear blue of the upper skies. Because their beauty compelled him

Haward looked at the heavens. The Court of the Orphan!... When my father

and my mother forsake, me, the Lord taketh me up. Haward acknowledged

with surprise that portions of the Psalter did somehow stick in the

memory.

The face of the child was dark and thin, but the eyes were large and there

was promise in the mouth. It was a pity-He looked at her again, and suddenly resolved that he, Marmaduke Haward,

would provide for her future. When they met once more, he should tell the

Governor and his brother adventurers as much; and if they chose to laugh,

why, let them do so! He would take the child to Williamsburgh with him,

and get some woman to tend her until he could find kind and decent folk

with whom to bestow her. There were the new minister of Fair View parish

and his wife,--they might do. He would give them two thousand pounds of

sweet-scented a year for the child's maintenance. Oh, she should be well

cared for! He would--if he thought of it--send her gifts from London; and

when she was grown, and asked in marriage, he would give her for dowry a

hundred acres of land.

As the strengthening rays of the sun, shining alike upon the just and the

unjust, warmed his body, so his own benevolence warmed his heart. He knew

that he was doing a generous thing, and his soul felt in tune with the

beamy light, the caroling of the birds, the freshness and fragrance of the

morning. When at last the child awoke, and, the recollection of the night

coming full upon her, clung to him, weeping and trembling, he put his arm

around her and comforted her with all the pet names his memory could

conjure up.