What the Heart Keeps by Rosalind Laker

Toronto people came to the centre with a willingness to take an immigrant servant, which is what we had all been led to expect, there were never any girls available. They were all going to the West.”
    “ Do you have any proof of what you believe to be happening?”
    “ Out of all the girls only two have ever written to me. One appreciated my forewarning her of what might lie ahead, and she had found out about the fee-paying. The second girl, named Alice, found herself alone on a prairie homestead with a brutal man who already had a wife somewhere. When the travelling threshers came for the harvest, she ran away with a thresher-man. He deserted her in a small town somewhere. She was near her time with the homesteader’s child and without a cent. She was begging in the streets when a covered wagon came through. A Mormon widow was on her way to make a new home in Raymond in the same province. The kind woman befriended her, tended her at the birth, and drove mother and baby with her to the new settlement. Alice has since married a Mormon herself and wanted me to know she has found happiness with a good man.” Lisa paused thoughtfully. “Although she was lucky in the end, it is impossible to measure the misery and hardship that many of the other girls have surely had to endure.”
    He spoke bluntly. “Has it occurred to you that some might have ended up in sporting houses?”
    She had not heard the expression before, but she understood its meaning. “Yes,” she replied with equal frankness. “The tragedy on that score is that remarkably few of those whom Miss Drayton brings are of a wayward nature. Although occasionally there is a rough group, they are on the whole quite ordinary girls, as nervous and upset by the strangeness of everything as the young children that come to the centre.”
    “ Do you still have the letters?
    “ Not anymore. They were stolen from my drawer.”
    “ By whom?”
    “ This is difficult to say. I fear there is pilfering by some girls and I lost a scarf and a blouse at the same time.”
    He frowned. “That’s a great pity. I realise that without any proof it would be virtually impossible to instigate an official investigation. Let us hope you hear from another of the girls soon.”
    “ I’ll make sure I don’t have the letter stolen from me, too.” She took a glance at a clock at that point and said she had to leave.
    He walked with her to the gates of the garden where she took her package of stationery from him. With all arrangements made to meet later that evening, she turned away down the street. She had covered no more than a few paces when he called after her. “Lisa!”
    She turned round and stood with the package weighing down her arms, her expression inquiring. “Yes, Peter?”
    His expression was intense and serious, almost threatening in the force of feeling that reached out to her. “Thank God you have never been sent away!”
    Her lips parted on a sharp intake of breath. She was excited and frightened as much by the vehemence of his words as by her own reaction to them. It was as if her heart flew to him while physically she was possessed by panic. She stammered an answer. “I never will. Not now. Nobody can make me. It would only be by my own free will.”
    “ That’s what I’m counting on.”
    He was saying too much and saying it too soon. She had never known that exultation and fear could go hand in hand. His eyes continued to hold hers as she took a step backwards and then another in the direction she was to go. Then abruptly she broke the visual contact between them, whirling about to continue on her way.
    At the house she was met by Miss Lapthorne in a tantrum at her lateness. “Where have you been, Lisa? Why weren’t you back long ago?” Her tone became self-pitying. “I have been waiting for you to make me a cup of tea.”
    It brought home to Lisa as never before how Miss Lapthorne had come to depend on her for every little thing. Although originally her