CHAPTER XLII. THE ADOPTED SON. The next day Mrs. Dillon stood at the ferry at Randell’s Island, looking wistfully back toward the spot where she had just left the ewe lamb of her flock. Her face was red with weeping, and from time to time she lifted up a corner of her shawl and wiped the drops from her eyes. Little Terry set up a pathetic howl, as the boat which had brought them over put back on its return voyage. Mary Margaret had no heart to chide him, but turned sorrowfully away, grieved to the soul as few mothers would have been. And there sat poor little Edward where he had been left, like a lost babe in all that wilderness of young life; all alone, and yet surrounded by so many. The very size of the nursery building terrified him. The crowd of strange faces hushed his grief into dumb silence. The nurses seemed like enemies that intended him some bodily harm, and from whom he would run away the moment their backs were turned. The child looked up to impart these thoughts to his foster-mother, and she was gone. He searched wildly around; his innocent eyes grew large with affright; his mouth and chin began to quiver; and his poor little hands were pressed hard down upon the bench where they had seated him. That baby-struggle was a pitiful thing to witness. That tiny form, taking up its first battle of life, with no weapons but its terror and its tears, was touching beyond description. When he saw that she was gone, and that he was quite alone in that forest of human beings, the wild eyes began to fill, his face flushed, and sobs of home-sick anguish heaved his chest. A group of little orphans, who had learned to keep their sorrows in silence, cast shy glances at him from the benches; while he, with a child’s instincts, looked wistfully at them through his tears, expecting the sympathy which they felt but could not express. A nurse came toward him filled with kindly interest, and in her motherly way strove to soothe him. “What is the matter, little one? don’t take on so!” she said; “don’t cry, that’s a dear.” “Mammy, mammy! I want mammy!” pleaded the child, stretching out his little arms, but folding them over his face, and turning his back as she would have taken him up. The nurse had many other cares, and left him to his grief. When she came back again, he was gazing out through the window with heavy eyes, and a look so heart-broken that she made fresh effort to console him. It would not do. The child only asked for his mammy, answering everything with the same pleading look, and the same home-sick cry. At night, when stretched upon the straw bed in the infant’s dormitory, with a strange child resting on the same pillow, still and orderly, with its sorrows hushed down into a dreary content, little Edward lay sobbing in the stillness. The presence of so many children, filling the room with the monotonous breath of their slumber, frightened away sleep.