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Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2556, 17 July 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

PATTIE-AND DESTINY.

(By Victor Grayson, M.P., in “The Clarion.”) j j I made the acquaintance oi Batbie when she was sixteen months old. She was snuggling comfortably in the arms of a big embarrassed policeman—protected from the bleak November winds by the warm folds of his great cape. Her emaciated little body was enveloped in a woman’s jacket—cut down. Her head had been shaved at the “Remand House,” and a rash covered her pinched little face. As the hall lamp cast its dull Tays on the incongruous little figure, I was guilty of the thought that death would be a desirable consummation. Then she opened her big brown eyes and stared at me with them. And I bowed before, the miracle and mystery of being . The matron, a kindly widow, called her Pattio after her own baby—deceased. For a day or two she spent almost her whole time in bathing and massaging her. And at night she slept her in a cot beside her own bed. Of the ordinary diet of her contemporaries, Pattie would have none. Laborious research was carried on it order to ascertain her taste. Finally are found it. Cheese washed down with beer were jPlatt-ie’s gastronomic predilections. When the wind howled and shook the windows at night, Pattie’s eyes would fill with an expression of terror. But she never cried. Once she fell out of her cot, a nasty fall. Instead of tears and squalling, she only looked intolerably bored. These unusual characteristics filled Mrs. Allen with a sense of the uncanny. So perturbed was she that all her old superstitions were called upon to explain poor Pattie. “It Isn’t natural not to cry when you’re a baby,” she murmured. “It isn’t wholesome! She’ll come to a bad end.”

Now the trouble with Pattie was that she had a bad- beginning. She was discovered by the inspector in a slum hovel lying on a putrid heap of straw . Her parents had deserted her, and neither of them could be traced. The clean, wholesome food, the sun. wind, field.?, flowers, birds and, animals remoulded her being. Her hair grew a deep auburn color, her limbs were finely moulded and plump. She frisked about as lively as any. She never laughed aloud until she was five. That was when she made the acquaintance of the nanny-goat. Her first tears came six months later. The fountain was loosed by the finding of a dead sparrow. She is teu now, and, 'if I may say so, reflects credit on the Creator. She. is a precocious little lady, and asks startling questions. Her keen eyes seem to bore one through and through. She takes quite, an appalling interest in the world and its affairs. She has prematurely developed the habit of introspection. Fairy tales leave her gazing into the fire''with a tolerant expression, as who should say, “Poor soul! It gives me amusement, I suppose,” She asked the Rev. Spinks where he fastened his collar one day and why! The Rev. Spinks explained that it was to distinguish parsons from lay folk. Pattie thought aloud that anybody ought to be able to tell them by the way they spoke. To change the subject Spinks produced his watch, and invited her to blow it open. Pattie innocently exclaimed that she was too old now to do it properly. Spinks opines that she is a most extraordinary child.

The only thing she does not seem anxious about is her own origin. I am glad of that. But she is very keen on knowing the origins of others. Spinks took her for a walk in theStrand the other day. Opposite Charing Cross Station they were accosted hy a little girl, with a thin, dirty body showing through the rents of her clothes. She asked Spinks why the little girl was poor and ragged. He suggested that it was because she had bad parents. Pattie wanted to know why God had not made this girl’s parents as good as Spinks. Spinks said it was all a matter of trusting or ignoring His will. Pattie wanted to know°what a “will’ was. Spinks said ho would tell her when they got back. He thought he had finished with it. But lie had not. When the tea things v\eie cleared, Pattie sat on the woolsack and began to look into the fire. Spinks does not like that attitude. He calls it the “interrogative mood.” Pattie reverted to the question of what a “will” was. He said the word was used in two senses. There was the Div inc will, which meant the “will of God,” and the legal will, which was a document drawn up by human beings disposing of their earthly goods to thcii heirs. Then she wanted to know wiiat earthly goods were? And what, an lieii was? And what was the. difference between an heir and an heiress? And was slic an heiress? till old Spinks had to turn her over to mo in absolute fatigue. , Now Pattie's questions always set me thinking. What is her inheritance. Left as thousands, aye, hundreds of thousands of children arc, to the tender mercies of our social system, 1 attic would have died in filth and disease before the age of two years.' If she bad lived, and been vouchsafed the care of her parents, she. would have grown up in the midst of her loathsome environment -and. assimilated its character, blie would liave spawned more human misery and died, leaving her wretched progeny to multiply and lot. I look at her as she sits on'the woolsack before the fire. She is healthy and light of heart. There is a fine sparkle" .in her eyes. She will make a decent conquest of the world’s good, Pattie is a charity child. She is the offspring of a squalid tragedy. If her

degraded motho: could see her now, she would how with becoming reverence. I think of her snuggling under the po-

liceman’s capu on .he bleak night l in November. I u;..ik of the thousands of unman flower:-, that are blighted ere ,hey can unfold. 1 think —

“What’s destiny mean?” asks Pattie, with a uuzzeu look. “It is a bea.iiy old thing!” I answer, as I roll her jaughing on the woolsack.