Either way, he wouldn’t leave Victoria until he faced Mercy again and learned how she really felt.

twenty-seven

As Mercy hugged the girls from her cabin, an ache pressed against her chest, an ache she didn’t want to dwell upon.

“I’ll see you again, that I will,” she said. “We’ll be right close enough that we’ll be neighbors.”

They sniffled and brushed away tears even through their excited smiles.

“Come now, girls,” said one of the matrons from Victoria’s Female Immigration Committee who’d arrived at the legislative building a short while ago. “The representatives of your new homes are here. Please form a single line so that we may pair you with your new employers.”

Mercy stepped away from the orphans and expelled a breath to ease the pain in her lungs and throat. Joseph’s whispered words after Sarah’s death rolled through her mind, a thick fog of an emotion she didn’t care to name. “If you push aside your pain, you can go on. But it’s still there, buried deep.”

She’d never allowed herself to feel the heartache of the many children she’d lost over the years—not her baby siblings, not the neighbor children, not Sarah, and now not these precious girls. How could she endure it if she dwelled upon such things?

She’d survived this far by letting go of the pain and moving on with her life. And she’d have to do so again. Wasn’t that what she was doing with Joseph? As hard as it was, she must push aside all thoughts of him. She had to do the same with the girls.

Mercy crossed to the other side of the large room, where some of the other poor women had congregated. After they’d finished washing up outside, the matrons from the committee ushered them back into the building and proceeded to divide them into three groups.

The first group consisted of the youngest girls. Mercy was relieved to discover that her sweet lambs were being placed directly into homes where they would live and work as domestics. The Female Immigration Committee had decided the orphans were too young for immediate marriage and should work until they were a bit older.

The girls hadn’t protested. When they’d learned their wages were to be no less than twenty-five pounds a year, their delight had warmed Mercy’s heart.

The committee then formed a second group, including a few widows and the wealthy middle-class women, who would be offered employment as teachers and governesses. From what Mercy could gather, some had positions already waiting for them. However, there weren’t enough teacher or governess jobs available to match the demand, so some of these women were remaining behind to join the third group, the one Mercy had been put into.