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I shouldn’t have spoken so. It’s only that I haven’t seen them in so long.”
    He sat on the side of the bed, startling her because he had been the model of propriety since she had opened her eyes. She tried to keep from thinking about him undressing her down to her smallclothes. Locking his hands around one knee, he said, “I have some questions of my own if you believe you’re well enough to continue this conversation.”
    â€œYes … yes, of course.” She clasped her own fingers together.
    Mr. Jennings spoke with obvious education, more than she would have imagined a farmer to have. Then she reminded herself how little she knew of American farmers. So little in America had matched the eager expectations she had enjoyed while she sailed across the stormy Atlantic and into New York harbor.
    â€œI take it from your words,” he said, “you’ve known where the children were for some time.”
    â€œI went to the Children’s Aid Society a couple of months ago.” That was stretching the truth a bit, because she had gone more than three months before, but she could guess, even when her head was hurt so badly, what his next question would be.
    He asked, just as she had assumed he would, “How is it the children were gone for so many weeks before you missed them?”
    â€œThey weren’t living with me.”
    â€œWhere were they?” Again his eyes slitted, and she wondered if he was thinking the children had been taken from her in New York. They had been, but not as he must assume.
    Quietly, Cailin said, “I’d left them with my husband’s family while I sought work so we could have a home of our own. New York City was so expensive, we soon spent every coin we brought from Ireland.” She did not dare to hesitate before she added, “I saw them only on my half-day each week, for I was working in a house many blocks from where they were staying. Then, one afternoon I came to visit them at Mrs. Rafferty’s home, and their grandmother told me the children were elsewhere visiting with friends.”
    â€œAnd you weren’t suspicious?”
    â€œI should have been, but I was so glad the children had new friends, I never questioned her, even when the children weren’t there the following week or the week after that.” Staring at her folded hands, she whispered, “I was just glad they were happy.”
    â€œBut …”
    Cailin looked at him as steadily as her aching head would allow. “But my children had been turned over to the Children’s Aid Society. The people there were told my children were orphans.” A sob bubbled in her throat, but she did not let it escape. “And my children obviously were told I was dead.”
    â€œWhy would their grandmother do such a thing?”
    â€œI’ve asked myself that a hundred times over each day.” Even though she did not let any tears fall, she took the handkerchief he held out to her. A linen handkerchief she had not suspected a farmer would own, but, again, she reminded herself how little she knew about American farmers. How many more times was she going to be betrayed before she realized how different this country was from the Irish countryside she had known all her life?
    His voice became gentler. “The children told me that not only were they told you were dead, but that they were being sent to stay with someone you’d arranged for them to live with.”
    â€œWhat? That was a lie!” She did not give voice to the plagues she wished would fall on everyone in that house where social standing meant more than anything or anyone.
    â€œOf course it is, I can see now. They were put on the orphan train by the Children’s Aid Society and sent to live among strangers.”
    She closed her eyes and whispered, “They must have been so frightened.”
    â€œThey were.” He did not give her a chance to respond before he