About This Book
~~~ first published 1956 by Mills & Boon
If Janie Smith was specially good at her job of Children's Officer, perhaps it was partly because she herself had been brought up in an orphanage that was a grim relic of the bad old days. She knew, and never forgot, how an unwanted child could be made to suffer. But sometimes her very understanding made her take her cases too much to heart. There was her determination to find Ricky Braid's father, that strange, wild, untamable character; he might not be much good to Ricky when found, and then Janie would be too bitterly disappointed, thought Councilor James Hill, even as he reluctantly helped her with her enquiries. Councilor Hill himself—a serious, thoughtful young man, the antithesis of the missing Braid —had his own plans for Janie. He could not know of her belief that a great gulf divided her world from his, a gulf she was sure not even love could bridge.
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It was partly because she had been an orphan herself that Janie was so god at her job of Children's Officer, so understanding, so eager to help. But the same fact made her thin-skinned, vulnerable, over-sensitive, made her afraid to accept love when it was offered her by a man whose world was very different from hers.