This is my response to today’s RagTag daily prompt word: HEART

One day, a century ago, a boy of three was brought to an orphanage and placed in the hands of the kind, capable housemother. He’d never known his parents, so he took to Miss C right off; whenever she put her arm around little David, he clung desperately to her.

She had a heart for the little boy and did her best to bring him up as a proper gentleman – though he could be such a mischief. Keeping him on the straight and narrow proved to be a constant challenge for her as David grew up, in spite of the boy’s deep affection for her. Yet Miss C persevered because she believed in the end he’d do well. David didn’t disappoint her, either. He went on to be a successful and well-respected business man in London.

Miss C tackled the job of housemother at that orphanage for thirty years; she gave the children all the love and help she could, but there came the time she needed to retire. The future looked a bit rough right then: she was sixty years old and no home of her own to go to. However would she manage her rent and daily expenses on just her pension?

David came down from London for the send-off. When he got wind of her financial situation he patted her shoulder and told her, “Don’t worry; just leave it all to me.”

He went out and bought a nice little home in Nottingham, just around the block from Miss C’s brother, and had the place repaired and redecorated. Then he handed Miss C the key – it was all hers – in return for the home and motherly love she had given him in his boyhood.

Story retold from one that appeared in the 1972 Friendship Book of Francis Gay.