I am just beginning to pick out individual faces among the children.
It seemed at first as though I could never learn them, they looked so
hopelessly cut out of one pattern, with those unspeakably ugly uniforms.
Now please don't write back that you want the children put into new
clothes immediately. I know you do; you've already told me five times.
In about a month I shall be ready to consider the question, but just now
their insides are more important than their outsides.
There is no doubt about it--orphans in the mass do not appeal to me. I
am beginning to be afraid that this famous mother instinct which we hear
so much about was left out of my character. Children as children are
dirty, spitty little things, and their noses all need wiping. Here
and there I pick out a naughty, mischievous little one that awakens a
flicker of interest; but for the most part they are just a composite
blur of white face and blue check.
With one exception, though. Sadie Kate Kilcoyne emerged from the mass
the first day, and bids fair to stay out for all time. She is my special
little errand girl, and she furnishes me with all my daily amusement.
No piece of mischief has been launched in this institution for the last
eight years that did not originate in her abnormal brain. This young
person has, to me, a most unusual history, though I understand it's
common enough in foundling circles. She was discovered eleven years
ago on the bottom step of a Thirty-ninth Street house, asleep in a
pasteboard box labeled, "Altman & Co."
"Sadie Kate Kilcoyne, aged five weeks. Be kind to her," was neatly
printed on the cover.
The policeman who picked her up took her to Bellevue where the
foundlings are pronounced, in the order of their arrival, "Catholic,
Protestant, Catholic, Protestant," with perfect impartiality. Our Sadie
Kate, despite her name and blue Irish eyes, was made a Protestant. And
here she is growing Irisher and Irisher every day, but, true to her
christening, protesting loudly against every detail of life.
Her two little black braids point in opposite directions; her little
monkey face is all screwed up with mischief; she is as active as a
terrier, and you have to keep her busy every moment. Her record of
badnesses occupies pages in the Doomsday Book. The last item reads:
"For stumping Maggie Geer to get a doorknob into her mouth--punishment,
the afternoon spent in bed, and crackers for supper."
It seems that Maggie Geer, fitted with a mouth of unusual stretching
capacity, got the doorknob in, but couldn't get it out. The doctor
was called, and cannily solved the problem with a buttered shoe-horn.
"Muckle-mouthed Meg," he has dubbed the patient ever since.