Evening Star Newspaper, November 17, 1929, Page 112

NNE POSEY sat in the waiting room of the Child Adoption Bureau, and, although the room was warm, she shivered. For Anne was scared. She didn't scare easily. She was usually one of the most unflinching women in the world. She didn't like being scared like this, and shivering, and having her hands like {cicles in her lap. But she couldn’t Lelp it. “I simply can't,” she admitted to herself. *“It's such an enormous thing to adopt a baby.” She shivered some more. It was such an enormous, such a critical, such an epoch-mak- ing thing to adopt a baby. The girl at the switchboard clicked her keys briskly. Capable-looking women, in dark blue silk with papers in their hands, passed to and fro before her. And still Anne sat. “Why don't they let me in?” she fumed. “Here I am, ready to adopt a baby, and they ,.Just let me sit. Don't they know how you feel when you're about to adopt a baby?” She gazed with curious awe around her. Here was the place where people who didn't have the babies came and got them, yet it was just an ordinary office. Beyond that little swinging gate were babies waiting to be adopted, and yet it was just like any other swinging gate in any other office. “Well, why not?” she asked herself. But it did seem strange. She peered down the long corridor. She didn’t see any babies. Where did they keep them? In a nursery, of course. But where was the nursery? And why, in heaven's name, didn’t they let her in? How business- like, how stupid, how utterly institutional they were—to let a woman sit on and on like this, waiting for a baby, as if she were a mere errand boy whose package wasn't ready! SE! tried to compose herself. There was noth- ing to be afraid of. After all, this was no impulse, to be here in quest of a baby. She had thought out this baby business carefully and long. Now, simply, here she was, carrying out her plan. It had begun last Summer when, in the re- volving gate of a New Jersey ferry station, she had suddenly passed, in her own particular merry-go-round, Janet Pirie, with—of all as- tonishing things—a baby in her arms. She had cried out, “I didn’t know you were married.” ..And Janet, looking back, shouted, “I'm not. Adopted.” And then the whirligig had flung them both out of sight, Janet lost in the thicket of the retreating crowd, Anne being pushed along to her beat. But the sudden vision of Janet, hurrying and happy, with a baby in her arms, had given Anne pause. “Why don’t I?” she had asked herself. The idea grew. Why didn’t she? Her mother lately died, her best friend and her only brother married and cavorting around China and likely to cavort there for some time, she was lonely, solitary, staid, and her life of school teaching and housekeeping, after 20 years, left much to be desired, far too much for a woman like Anne, whose spirit was so rich and full. Why not a baby? She had telephoned to Janet, and Janet had been loud in encouragement. “My dear, you must. You couldn’t make a mistake about it. I got mine in Chicago last Spring. Didn’'t intend to, but I heard about him and took him. And he’s a lamb. Oh, awfully bad, of course. Squalls like fury and I simply go crazy. But you don’t mind. It's so sweet to have ’em, even when they squall.” Janet told her of the State Child Adoption Bureau, and Anne had begun, furtively, looking up the address, and asking people about it. ‘Then, one day, in the newspaper had appeared an appeal for funds for the bureau, a large, bold appeal, stating the need for money, explaining the work, topped off by a quatrain of John Masefield’s. It was that quatrain that had de- cided Anne, Y- “He who gives a child a treat Makes joy-bells ring in Heaven's street. “He who gives a child a home Builds palaces in Kingdom Come.” That was it. Of course, that was it, who gives a child a home builds palaces in dom Come. Anne would build a palace, if no* pre- cisely in Kingdom Come, at least here on earth, in Westchester County, to be specific. She would adopt a baby, and build a palace for him, a tiny little house, with a garden and puppies and kittens and rows of books by the fireplace, and the sun lavish at the windows. She would stop teaching school—heaven knew it was time—and she would spend her days with that baby, bathing his funny little pink body, twist- ing up his hair into a “Thames Tunnel” like the babies in English novels, making jolly little cookies for him—oh, yes, spinach and carrots, too, but once in a while cookies didn’t hurt— singing Mother Goose to him, rocking him, in a chair by a sunny, flowery window. (Certainly she would rock him! What were women’s laps and arms for if not to rock babies?) THEN, when he got big, off he’d go to school of mornings and she’d bustle about the house, making up his tumbled bed—boys do kick up their beds so abominably—and beating the rugs and tidying his littered bureau, being very careful, of course, not to disturb the lit- tered precious disorder of his tools and rallio parts and books and foot balls, disorder so dear to every male heart. And nights he’'d study wgg'downstairs, while she read or mended his big old woolen stockings—study and frown and breathe hard and grunt—for she didn’t much care whether he was really a student or not. Even as a teacher she didn’t demand that of a boy. Well, he’d grow up astonishingly, and go to work and get married and have children and she, Anne, would be alone again. But she didn’t seem to mind that. You're not really alone, if you have once had a boy. Anne stood in the directors’ room of the Child Adoption Bureau and her shivering had become so violent as to be a very ague. The director, whom she saw merely as a pair of .very large and terrifying spectacles, offered her & chair. A PALACE IN KINGDOM COME By Sarah Addington. THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., NOVEMBER 17, 1929. She would spend her days with that baby, bathing his funny little pink body, twisting up his hair in a “Thames Tunnel.” Anne Planned a Course of Action That Looked Simple, and Then Falling in Love Complicated Everything—A Story From the Pen of a Writer New to Star Magazine Readers. at the card in her hand, quick-eyed, brown-faced “You are Miss Posey?” “yes.” “Er—you wish to adopt a Baby yourself?” “Yes.” She smiled, her quick smile that darted like a bird at her lips, then flew up and perched in her eyes. The gpectacles smiled, too, but slowly, un- certainly. “I must tell you, Miss Posey, that although I am the director here, I do not usually make the arrangements for placing babies. But Miss Graham is away and I—" “Oh! Do I have to wait to see Miss Graham?” “Well, no. I can enter your application and have an investigator call. You understand, we always Investigate our applicants very care- fully, just as we give you every opportunity to investigate the child’s history and background.” “Well? Well?” thought Anne, impatiently. But she said, “Certainly, I understand that,” and waited for him to go on. He cleared his throat. “What'’s the matter with the man?” thought Anne. Then he looked squarely at her. “I think I ought to tell you, Miss Posey— yes, I really must be frank with you. It is not our custom to place children in homes— in homes where there is only one parent.” A start from Anne made him hasten on. “You see, we have more applications than we have children. Adoption is a very popular- » “You mean,” cut in Anne, “I can't adopt & baby because I haven't a husband?” “I don't say you can’t. We sometimes——" “Good heavens!” breathed Anne. “I didn't suppose you had to have a husband to adopt a baby.” The man laughed. “It's this way. We feel that it's better for the child to be put into a home as nearly nor- mal as possible.” “Yes. I suppose it is normal to have a hus- band. Only I just never considered one in- dispensable.” The director laughed again. “Perhaps husbands aren’t. But fathers are, we feel. We want our children to have both fathers and mothers. So I'm afraid, Miss Posey —I don’t want to discourage you unduly—but I'm afraid you'd have to wait a long time for a baby from us. We have such a long waiting list now. But would you consider an older child —one, say, about 14 to 16? We have, frankly, difficulty in placing them. I might be able— in fact, I think I could promise—" A picture swam before Anne's eyes, a sunny, flowery window, & rocking chair beside it—— “No,” said Anne quietly, “I wanted a baby.” “I'm sorry,” he said. “I wish you'd leave your application anyway. There's always & chance, you know. I'll do my best for you.” So Anne left her application: Name, address, bank references, social references, church refer- ences, reason for desiring child, age of child de- sired, sex, prejudices as to nationality or cir- cumstances of birth. . “A Chinaman’s chance,” said she, on the street once more. “My word, don’t married women have all the luck?” ‘Thus is was that Anne decided to find herself & man. THE decision came to her as she went home that afternoon from' the Adoption Bureau. Bleak was the afternoon, a windy, ugly, bleak November day, and bleak was Anne's spirit, robbed so recently of all the glories of her hopes and plans. Anne, battling with the wind that tore at her skirts, her hat, ‘her hair, battled with this new raging storm in her heart, and spoke grim words to herself. “The nerve of him, patronizing me because I'm an old maid.” She thought of Janet. Ap- parently they were more broad-minded in Chi- cago, but she couldn’t go out there. “As if I wouldn't be just a3 good a mother for Derry—" (somewhere, out of the catalogue of all the names in the world, “Derek,” and “Derry” for short, had fastened itself on this boy she was going to have, just as his sex had come to her, by instinct, not by deliberate choice)—“as if I wouldn't be as good a mother for Derry without a husband as with.” Better indeed, she thought. What price a strange man around the house, when a woman and a boy get along so well without him? “Though I suppose one’s husband isn't precisely a stranger,” she mused. But—a husband in that tiny house of hers? A person who shaved in the morning, and was fussy about his breakfast? A person sitting with them in the lamplight, rattling the evening paper, spoiling the sweet duet of their long, happy hours? “Still,” thought Anne sud- denly, “it would be nice to have somebody for the furnace. You always have difficulty about furnaces. And Derry couldn't heave coal for a long, long time. This really may not be a bad idea.” Climbing on to a trolley car, Anne considered the notion further. “He could play bail with the boy, too, and we could all go coasting to- gether. A man is better about sleds than a woman.” And s0, by the time Anne had reached home, the great decision had been reached. “Just ‘how, though,” she wondered, does one snare & man?” She reviewed her knowledge, none too broad, of the technique of man-snar- “.You feed ’em, of course, and wear frilly dresses and pinch your cheeks to make ‘em pink.” But what else? This seemed inadequate —no man with any sense would capitulate to that trinity of tame allurements. “Oh, yes, you hang on their words!” Suddenly she burned crimson. How unutterably silly! “I won’t hang on Martin Crosby’s words. He has some ap- palling ideas. And he’d think me a ninny if I suddenly turned around and agreed.” For, of course, Martin Crosby was the candi- date for her newly vowed intention. No se- lective process had been necessary to determine this. Martin was simply the only man she knew who was eligible at all for the honor of her hand. There was the high school principal, of course, who so far had resisted the blandish- ments of the some 40 or 50 unattached females who had passed his way in the Girls’ High School, but marry that old woman—I should say not! And Tom’s friends? No. not one of them would do, roistering vagabonds all of them. And although Anne loved her brother better than anybody else in the world, she wouldn’t have married anybody like him, for a thousand Derrys, for a Jifetime of lamplit hours and comfort and country gardens, and dear labors in ccokie dough. Clumsy, honest, stupid old Tom. How did Parky endure him, gallivating all over the world, with never a moment’s peace? Remained, then, only Martin, the lanky, ab- stracted, fanciful, inky-fingered, untidy, pipe- smoking queer duck who lived above her in their Chelsea converted dwelling, and with whom she had such a casual, unimportant friendship— Martin, who dropped in on her at all hours every day for a week, perhaps, then passed her by completely for a month as if all that inti- mate companionship had gone for simply naught., A slippery person, Martin. How could she ever get him to marry her, sliding in and out of her horizon as he did? You have to lead up to marriage. You couldn’t lead up to anything with Martin, not even a substantial friendship. Not that she had ever been sensitive about Mar- tin’s fickleness. She always knew, during every lapse, that he’d come bounding back to her, and he always did. He'd pound impatiently at her door and pump her arm and his eyes would rove delightedly around her rooms and he would act, the simpleton, quite as if at last he had found her again after a frenzied search— bleased, eager, self-congratulatory, his Co- lumbus-discovering-America mm'nl,fy she always called it. When the truth was, he just hadn’t thought of her for days. Oh, he was such Nor, upon these reappearances, did he ever offer the least apology or exeuse. Simply, they would go on where they had left off two or three weeks before. He would scold her for not using her mind. He thought her a sim- hopeless case intellectually, because she wasn't up on the Einstein theory, and never remember how far it was from the moon or was it the .sun? what Martin would say if he knew planning to get married and adopt de from the consideration that the lucky man, what would think? That was one of the things : you never knew quite what he old variability again, lling him, “Martin, and adopt a baby.” tear the pipe out of her and say, “There it. You're nothing »” L £ AND again, she could see him, upon her announcement, scrutinizing her with his kind gray eyes—Martin’s eyes could be kind, though they were as often merely impudent— “Yes, I think you could do with a husband.” There was one thing Anne was sure of: Mar- tin would not give a single hang whether she married anybody else or not. Now, how to marry a man like that? “This is going to be difficult,” she said. She rolled up her sleeves to wash the supper dishes and smiled. She was rolling up her sleeves to begin work on poor old Martin, too. ” “Poor old Martin. Nonsense. Smug thing. He needs a jerking-up!” Marriage was a Jerking-up, she considered. “And besides, what a grand life he’ll ‘lead, bossing me around from morning till night.” She finished the dishes, poked up the fire, tried to write a letter, tried to read, and suc- ceeded only in fidgeting from one chair to :another for three mortal hours. For Martin didn't comé. “The pig,” she fumed. “Isn't it just like him? Supposing he doesn’t come back for two or three weeks? Oh, Derry, you're worth it, I suppose, but this is hard.” Then, just as she had lost herself in an old familiar vision—it was Derry's sixth birthday—a clatter on her door startled her, and a voice demanded, none too gently, “Hey, there, let me in!” Fluttering, Anne reached the door. Stute tering in panic, she told herself, “I can't snare this man. I can't, and I won't.” Martin jounged in, took his favorite chair, the best one, and rummaged in his pockets. “I brought you something. Gosh, where is it? Oh, yes” He brought forth a stick of chewing gum in pink paper. Soothing to the nerves. Good for ine somnia. You have so much trouble.” She tossed it into the waste-basket. “Witty as usual, I see.” A grin threatened her gravity. Martin "laughed. He loved his own jokes, and he loved, too, her unfailing scorn of them. “I was just going to bed,” she said, po- litely. “Really?” returned Martin, settling deeper into his chair. “You may stay until 11—no longer.” He glanced at her little clock in its bold position on the mantel “Nope, it's after 10 now. Eleven comes too soon. I went to a movie tonight. Want to hear about it?” *“No.” As the talk veered into smoother channcls