Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-11-17
\ PALACE IN KINGDOM COME

- NNE POSEY sat in the waiting room
III of the Child Adoption Bureau, and,
II 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
1cicles in her lap. But she couldn't help it.
"I simply can't" she admitted to herself.
%It's such an enormous thing to adopt baby"
She shivered some more. 1t was such an
enormous, such a critical such an epoch-mak-
ing thing to adopt baby.
The girl at the switchboard clicked her keys
briskIy. 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.
sHere am ready to adopt baby, and they
\. just let me sit. Don't they know how you feel
when you're about to adopt babyP"
She gazed with curious awe around her.
Here was the place where people who didn't
have the babies came and got Them yet 1t 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 heavens
name, didn't they let her in? How business
like, how stupid, how utterly institutional they
were-to let woman sit on and on like this.
waiting for q baby, as If she were mere errand
boy whose package wasn't ready!
CHE tried to compose herself. There was Moth
~ ing to be afraid of. After all, this was no
impulse to be here In quest Of baby. She had
thought out this baby business carefully and
long Now, simply, here she was carrying out
her plan.
1t had begun last Summer when, In the re-
voIving gate of New Jersey ferry station, she
had suddenly passed, in her own particular
merTy-go-round, Janet Pirie, with-of all as
tonishing things-a baby in her arms. She had
cried out, II didn't know you were married"
n 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 boat But the sudden vision Of
Janet, hurrying and happy, with 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 70
be desired, far too much for q woman like
Anne, whose spirit was so rich and full.
Why not baby?
She had telephoned to Janet and Janet had
been loud in encouragement.
MY dear, you must You couldn't make
mistake about it. got mine in Chicago last
Spring. Didn't intend to. but I heard about
him and took him. And he's lamb. Oh,
awfully bad of course. Squalls like fury and
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 of by a quatrain of John
Masefields. It was that quatrain that had de-
cided Anne.
y HE who gives child treat
Makes joy-bells ring in Heavens street.
HE who gives child home
Builds palaces in Kingdom Come"
That was it. OF course, that was it. who
gives child home builds palaces in 3Singdom
Come Anne would build palace if no. pre-
cisely in Kingdom Come, at least here on earth,
in Westchester County, to be specific. She
would adopt baby, and build 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 Thames Tunnel" like
the babies in English novels. making jolly little
cookies for hin-oh, yes spinach and carrots,
too but once in while cookies didn't hurt
singing Mother Goose to him, rocking him, in
a chair by sunny howery 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 hustle about the
house. making up his tumbled bed-boys do