Ether & Elephants by Cindy Spencer Pape

found me.”
    “So you don’t have anywhere to go back to?” Nell held the girl tightly as she sobbed.
    Nancy sniffled. “No, my lady. Just back to the streets.”
    “We’ll find something.” Nell would be damned before that would happen. “Either school, or an apprenticeship. What would you like to do?”
    “Weren’t you listening?” Nancy sat up straight and wiped the tears from her face. “Me mum was a whore. S’pose I’ll be one too.”
    “Not unless you want to,” Nell said, brushing Nancy’s tangled hair from her forehead. She stopped short of saying, so was mine. “The people in this house don’t care what your mother did. It’s all about what you want to do. We’ll find you a good situation. I promise that, even if I’m not a milady . I’m just a schoolteacher.”
    Or at least she had been. But she would be again, so it counted. An idea began to form. Her father had said he’d build her a school. He hadn’t specified a school for the blind. What if she could take in other children like Nancy, who simply had no place to go? Nell wasn’t sure she was up to the task of running it all on her own, but with Roger beside her they could make a world of difference in so many young lives.
    “What can I do to help?” a bright, cheery voice asked from the doorway.
    “Mum!” Nell squealed, wanting to rush into Caroline’s arms but unwilling to let go of the child in hers. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
    “Me too, dearest.” Caroline Merrick, still pretty despite nearing forty, ran over and kissed the top of Nell’s head. She laid a hand on Nancy’s shoulder. “And who have we here?”
    Geneva wrapped the girl’s fingers. “A brave young lady, who now requires a bath but needs to keep that hand out of the water.”
    “I think I recall how to manage that,” Caro said with a chuckle, her green eyes twinkling. “Nell, do you remember when Jamie broke his arm sliding down the bannister?”
    Nell chuckled. “The day before you came to Hadrian House. How could I ever forget?”
    “You don’t look like her mum,” Nancy said as Caro led her over to where a copper tub had been set up behind a curtain for the girls. “Your hair is yellow and hers is black.”
    “Well, now that’s a long story.” Caro kept a hand on Nancy’s shoulder. Very few people knew about it, but Caro had a gift for healing. Nancy’s fingers would mend quicker than they otherwise might have. “She had another mother, you see, but that one died. So we adopted her and I was lucky enough to get Nell for a daughter.”
    “It works like that?” Nancy asked, wide-eyed.
    “Sometimes,” Nell said. “But I’m the lucky one.” She let her mother take Nancy while she returned to assist the doctor.
    Next, Geneva set stitches on a young boy’s forehead while Nell held his hand and elicited his information. Benjie had living parents, not far away, and could be taken home by nightfall. One by one, each of the rescued children was seen to, bathed, fed and found something to wear from Black Heath’s attics and storerooms. By midafternoon, only two were left who had nowhere to go. “Could use a new boot boy,” Mrs. Ritchie said to the homeless boy whose dead parents had apparently been farmers. “Fair wages, room in the attic, training to move up in the household. You interested?”
    “Yes, ma’am.” The towheaded urchin nodded. “Beats mucking stables or smashing rocks.”
    “Come along.” Barnaby led the young man off to his new quarters.
    “And what about you, Nancy?” Nell smiled at the girl. “I suppose someone here could use a new housemaid, but there are other things, too. What would you do if you had a choice?”
    “I like to sew,” she said. “And draw.”
    “I think, for now, Nancy will come with us,” Caro said. “There’s always room for a guest in the nursery, and it will do Sylvia good to not be the oldest for a change.”
    “A nursery maid, ma’am?” Nancy’s eyes widened. “That would