mommy, dear, because you'll be my own little girl tomorrow!"
"Yes'm," the grave child nodded obediently, "I'll call you Mother, if Mommy says it's all right. Oh, I . . . I do hope you're the one!"
And Mrs. Ellison left, feeling baffled and entirely unsure whether or not she had won that first match.
The ponderous amount of red tape was snipped through, true to the matron's promise. A few days later, with a late autumn sun gilding the yellow leaves a brighter gold, Mrs. Ellison again drove to the Acipco County Orphanage.
She had dismissed her chauffeur, bought a woolly Sealyham pup at a pet shop en route, as well as a lovely little blue silk dress, and set forth rather grimly. These, she thought, are my weapons. With these I will lay for ever the ghost of Martha's "mommy," and she'll haunt that lonely child no longer!
An hour later, they were whirling out of the orphanage driveway—a tall gentle-eyed woman at the steering-wheel and, close beside her, a little girl in a blue dress, ecstatically hugging her new puppy.
Threading her way through the afternoon traffic, Mrs. Ellison smiled and chatted merrily, but her heart seethed. Confound that selfish hysterical woman, dying on her hospital cot! She had left a mark on this wistful credulous baby that time could not erase!
For a moment, glancing sidewise at her adopted daughter, Martha's second mother hated that first one who stood between them like an invisible wall, in spite of everything she could do.
Or, did she? Eerily Mrs. Ellison felt an alien presence in that wide car seat—but not between her and the child. Rather, it seemed that someone . . . something . . . was seated on the other side of little Martha, allied with her new mother, guarding the child on one side while she herself guarded the other.
The tall woman shook herself angrily. What utter rot! Was she, too, succumbing to the child's hallucination? She must exorcise that spirit now, or admit defeat by something that did not exist.
"Do you love your new mommy?" she coaxed, bending sidewise to hug little Martha with one arm.
The child snuggled closer. Wide blue eyes blazed up at her, aglow with happiness. "Oh, yes, Mother! You are really and truly my mother now, aren't you? So I'll tell you a secret," as the woman's face lighted with triumph. "Mommy told me last night that she picked you out for me a long, long time ago! An' she said"
"Martha!" Mrs. Ellison drew back sharply as from an unexpected blow. "Stop talking like that!" she commanded shortly. "I want you to forget all that nonsense about your mother, Remember and love her always, of course. But your mommy went to Heaven over a year ago, and you must stop pretending that"
A scream from the child cut her short. Mrs. Ellison broke off, jerked her head around, and was transfixed with horror to see a huge and driverless gasoline truck hurtling down upon them from the long narrow hill they were slowly ascending.
The great red juggernaut was picking up speed. It careened from curb to curb like a drunken monster, making for their car with a blood-chilling accuracy, blunt-nosed and heavy as a locomotive.
Panic swept over Mrs. Ellison,
