The Orphan and the Mouse Read Online Free PDF

responsibility. She needed to telephone the exterminator.
    â€œWhat kind of cat doesn’t kill mice?” she said to the tabby. “I brought you indoors because you’re pretty, but that doesn’t let you off the hook. You’re lazy, is what you are.”
    The cat yawned, which seemed to confirm her assessment.
    Mrs. George sighed. She didn’t like calling the exterminator. When he came to do his dirty work, the staff and the children would have to leave the premises, and where were they to go? If mice had come to light the year before, the childrencould have gone to a municipal swimming pool, but not this summer, not when the rumor of polio was everywhere. Mrs. George couldn’t afford to have a child get sick. That kind of publicity would be ruinous.
    The headmistress’s private apartment was on the third floor of the Cherry Street Home. Now, dressed in a pale-blue linen suit, Mrs. George locked her door, descended two flights of stairs, and turned left into the kitchen. There Mrs. Spinelli was preparing eggs, toast, and milk for the children.
    Two of the intermediate girls, Barbara and Ginny, were helping and curtsied when they saw Mrs. George. “Morning, ma’am.”
    â€œGood morning, girls. Mrs. Spinelli?”
    â€œYes, ma’am.” Unsmiling, Mrs. Spinelli presented Mrs. George with her coffee in a china cup on a saucer.
    â€œThank you,” said Mrs. George.
    â€œMmph,” said Mrs. Spinelli.
    Mrs. George left the kitchen through the dining room, crossed the foyer, and entered her office, a large room on the same corridor as the girls’ dormitories. On her desk, she found—as always—the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. Vaguely aware of the sounds coming from down the corridor, sounds made by girls arising, washing their faces, and dressing, Mrs. George sat down, arranged the newspaper in front of her, sipped her coffee, and read.
    A worrisome front-page story about city politics caught her eye. A reformist candidate was trying to unseat the longtime Philadelphia sheriff, a powerful man who had done favors forMrs. George and her good friend Judge Jonathan Mewhinney. This push from the reformers might in turn cause her to hasten completion of her latest plan. If she expected to succeed, she would need perfect execution and a bit of luck.
    Mrs. George drank the last of the now-tepid coffee, folded the newspaper . . . and then did something strange: looked around to be sure no one was watching. No one was. No one could have been, given the situation of her office in the west wing of the building. But what she was about to do required so much secrecy that she was superstitious in her caution.
    Satisfied she was alone, Mrs. George removed two fifty-dollar bills from an inside pocket of her jacket and put each in a business envelope. Then she picked up the ivory-inlaid box on her desk, pulled open a hidden compartment, removed a tiny silver key, and used it to open a file drawer. From that drawer she took out an accounts ledger. It was not the one she shared with the Cherry Street Home’s board of directors, but a second kept for her own use.
    In the ledger, she noted the two fifty-dollar expenses but left blank the spaces for the dates they were incurred. Then she returned the book to the drawer, locked it, and put the key away. The envelopes she placed in her pocketbook in case she needed them on short notice.
    It was eight-thirty, time to make her daily announcements at the children’s breakfast table. The newspapers could be kept in the dark about the morning’s visitor, but the children and the staff would have to be told.

Chapter Thirteen

    All the children were delighted by Mrs. George’s announcement, none more so than thirteen-year-old Melissa: “Joanna Grahame’s coming here?
Good golly!
”
    What would the movie star be wearing? Was she as beautiful in real life as she was on-screen? Would she bring along a handsome