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managed to make the orphanage his home, and that is the problem. If you try to give an institution of the state, or of any government, anything like the love one is meant to invest in a family—and if the institution is an orphanage and you succeed in giving it love—then you will create a monster: an orphanage that is not a way-station to a better life, but an orphanage that is the first and last stop, and the only station the orphan will accept.
    “There is no excuse for cruelty, but—at an orphanage—perhaps we are obliged to withhold love; if you fail to withhold love at an orphanage, you will create an orphanage that no orphan will willingly leave. You will create a Homer Wells—a true orphan, because his only home will always be at St. Cloud’s. God (or whoever) forgive me. I have made an orphan; his name is Homer Wells and he will belong to St. Cloud’s forever.”
    By the time Homer was twelve, he had the run of the place. He knew its stoves and its wood boxes, its fuse boxes, its linen closets, its laundry room, its kitchen, its corners where the cats slept—when the mail came, who got any, everyone’s name, who was on what shift; where the mothers went to be shaved when they arrived, how long the mothers stayed, when—and with what necessary assistance—they left. He knew the bells; in fact, he rang them. He knew who the tutors were; he could recognize their style of walking from the train station, when they were still two hundred yards away. He was even known at the girls’ division, although the very few girls older than he was frightened him and he spent as little time there as he could—going only on errands for Dr. Larch: messages and delivering medicines. The director of the girls’ division was not a doctor, so when the girls were sick, either they visited Dr. Larch at the hospital or Larch went to the girls’ division to visit them. The director of the girls’ division was Boston Irish and had worked for a while at The New England Home for Little Wanderers. Her name was Mrs. Grogan, although she never mentioned Mr. Grogan, and no one seeing her would have an easy time imagining that there had ever been a man in her life. She may have preferred the sound of Missus to the sound of Miss. At The New England Home for Little Wanderers she had belonged to a society called God’s Little Servants, which had given Dr. Larch pause. But Mrs. Grogan showed no signs of seeking members for such a society in St. Cloud’s; perhaps she was too busy—in addition to her duties as director of the girls’ division, she was responsible for arranging what little education was available for the orphans.
    If there was an orphan who remained at St. Cloud’s past the sixth grade level of school, there was no school to go to—and the only school for grades one through six was in Three Mile Falls; this was only a one-station stop on the train from St. Cloud’s, but in 193_ the trains were often delayed, and the Thursday engineer was notorious for forgetting to stop at the St. Cloud’s station (as if the sight of so many abandoned buildings convinced him that St. Cloud’s was still a ghost town, or perhaps he disapproved of the women who got off the train there).
    The majority of the pupils in the one-room schoolhouse in Three Mile Falls thought themselves superior to the occasional orphans in attendance; this feeling prevailed the most strongly among those students who came from families where they were neglected or abused, or both, and thus grades one through six, for Homer Wells, were comprised of experiences more combative than educational. He missed three Thursdays out of four, for years, and at least one other day (every week) because of a late train; in the winters, he missed a day a week because he was sick. And when there was too much snow, the trains didn’t run.
    The three tutors suffered the same perils pressed upon train service in those years, because they all came to St. Cloud’s from Three Mile