Author’s Note: This very short story falls in the non-erotic department because the main female character is 14 years old. There is no sexual act in this story that is fully described. It is merely hinted. If this romance is not your cup of tea, please read one of my many other stories on this website that are sexually charged.

Introduction

Harry Truman once said that the only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know. I’ve found that to be true many times. I had never heard of America’s “Orphan Trains” until about 20 years ago when I stumbled upon a fascinating story of a woman in her nineties who was researching her ancestry. She had ridden an “Orphan Train” as a toddler but had no memory of it.

Basically, the Orphan Train Movement was an American child welfare experiment that lasted 75 years. It ran from 1854 to 1929. It relocated an estimated 150,000 to 250,000 abandoned, destitute, or orphaned children from crowded eastern cities to rural families in America’s midwest and west. It aimed to alleviate city poverty and provide farm labor. Abandoned and orphaned children were living nightmarish lives on the street of New York City in the 1850s, when a man named Charles Loring Brace decided to do something about it. He founded the Children’s Aid Society in the United States. The original mandate of the CAS was to get these children safely off the dangerous streets and send them westward via trains to live with adoptive families, usually on farms. It was thought to be a win-win situation for everyone.

The following is a fictitious story about one of these Orphan Train riders.

Part One

My name is Matthew Eagles. In the spring of 1893, my widowed father, Gregory, worked for the Children’s Aid Society in New York City in an executive capacity. Often his work was done entirely by sitting behind a desk. However, every so often, he was asked to be a chaperone on an Orphan Train that was leaving New York and heading westward. He relished this type of opportunity because it was a hands-on experience that he enjoyed doing. He was a big advocate of the Orphan Trains and was only too happy to move children from dire situations in big eastern cities to the fresh air of America’s rural heartland. Therefore, he eagerly volunteered to be one of a dozen chaperones who would be escorting 30 orphans or abandoned children to Colorado, presumably leading them to more fulfilling lives.

To my surprise, Dad invited me to make the trip with him as an unofficial chaperone. I was 20 years old that year and busily living a life of luxury. Both my parents were from well-to-do families. Dad paid me a large allowance each month, so I did not worry about having to earn a living—at least not yet. I took occasional university courses just for fun. Since I was strong academically, Dad figured I could be useful during the trip. I could teach the children on the train arithmetic, spelling, geography and other topics to pass the time. Furthermore, it would be educational for me, too. I’d get to see much of the country via my window—and I was even paid a stipend for my time and efforts. I quickly agreed to the idea because I thought it was a marvelous thing for me to do.

When we boarded the train in Manhattan, I quickly became acquainted with the 30 youngsters who ranged in age from two to 16. One caught my eye immediately. She was a girl named Melanie Davis who looked to be about 14. (I later found out my estimate was accurate.) She had been recently orphaned when both her parents were killed in a grisly accident when a speeding street car plowed into the horse-drawn buggy in which they were riding. She had no close relatives to care for her. This girl looked lost, which was completely understandable as her safe and secure world had been turned upside down in one tragic instant. Dad told me to be especially nice to Melanie. I said of course I would. He didn’t have to ask me twice. With her long eyelashes, pretty face, and curly brown hair, she was quite fetching despite being six years my junior.

I quickly learned that about half of the 30 children had zero interest at all in doing schoolwork during their long train journey. The novelty of being on a lengthy train trip was more than enough to amuse them. That was alright; my lessons were absolutely optional. However, the other 15 or so were quite keen to learn things from me. Luckily, one of them was the lovely and delightful Melanie Davis. She was an excellent reader, so I gave her some poetry and short stories to read and then discuss with me. We hit it off immediately. She wrote a thoughtful, short essay comparing the melancholy one poem’s subject was experiencing to her own sadness since the sudden loss of her parents. It actually brought a tear to my eye—and I told her so.

“That’s so kind of you to say, Matthew,” she said. I saw she had tears in her eyes, too. I could only imagine the pain residing in her heart. It was bad enough for me four years earlier when my mother died suddenly one day of a ruptured appendix. Having both parents snatched away in a tragic instant was unfathomable to me. We didn’t intend for it to happen, but we embraced. The hug lasted long enough to turn into a kiss. This amused and interested an eight-year-old orphan girl named Iris Johnston who asked me, “Can I get a hug and a kiss, too, Matthew?” Of course I obliged. Iris was delighted and henceforth insisted on hugging and kissing me at every possible opportunity. Melanie gave Iris frequent hugs, too.

As my lessons with her progressed, Melanie lingered longer and longer with me to do math problems and just to talk about the unprecitability of life. We obviously were attracted to one another and neither one of us were secret about it. We kissed and embraced constantly. Dad disapproved of my romancing one of the orphans, but I asked him, “How does one control love? It can’t be controlled, can it?”

He said nothing. He had no answer for that rhetorical question.

On our second day since departing, Dad explained to me that my connection with Melanie, romantic or otherwise, might be a very fleeting one. Before getting to its final destination of Aurora, Colorado, the train would make three stops along the way in various farming communities. To my amazement, farm couples were permitted to gather at the railroad station and promptly adopt the children who were not yet assigned to new parents. (In some cases, there were "custom orders" for children. On this particular train, a four-year-old girl named Sarah had already been assigned to adoptive parents in Colorado because they wanted a daughter her age who had blue eyes.) For children who were selected at these whistle stops, an adoption could be done literally in a moment’s notice without any vetting of the prospective parents whatsoever. Theoretically, a child could refuse to be adopted, but it was almost unheard of. Such defiance would have taken more courage than most of them could muster. Amazingly, since the Orphan Trains began running in 1854, there had been very few negative stories about unfit parents harming the children they had adopted. It had been just the opposite, nothing short of a roaring success with literally thousands of youngsters being taken off the streets or out of orphanages and welcomed into loving families.

Dad informed me, “Usually, the farmers choose healthy boys nearing their teenage years who will be able to handle rigorous farm work. But sometimes they choose girls if their wives want daughters. Melanie is unassigned at the moment. Given how pretty she is, how long do you think it will take some farm couple in the middle of rural Missouri to adopt her? Maybe a lonely farmer might ‘adopt’ her and then decide to make Melanie his wife. I can see that happening.”

So could I—and I was crestfallen. I found Melanie and quickly asked her if she understood that she might be adopted at a moment’s notice in the middle of nowhere by farmers she’d never even heard of. “Yes,” she said without any emotion. “In fact, I expect that will be the case.”

I decided then and there I was in love with this wonderful girl whom I had known for only about 48 hours. I didn’t want to lose her if there was any way I could prevent it from happening. I told Melanie how I felt. She melted into tears and said she had developed similar feeling towards me, too. Hugs, kisses, and tears followed shortly thereafter.

Melanie and I went to a secluded part of the train to ponder our options. They were few. We decided to seek professional advice—or the closest thing on the train we had to it. We spoke to Reverend Klein, a Presbyterian minister. He was another CAS chaperone assigned to the trip. We explained our situation to him. He was surprisingly sympathetic towards us. “There is one way of preventing Melanie from being adopted at the first whistle stop, ” he informed us. “It’s a little bit radical, though.” Radical or not, Melanie and I eagerly wanted to hear this wise man’s solution whatever it might be.

“It's marriage," he told us. "You can get married—and since I’m an ordained minister, I can legally perform the service to marry you. However, because of Melanie's age, I can’t just marry you because you suddenly fell in love with each other. There must be extenuating circumstances.”

“Such as what?” I asked hopefully.

“Oh,” he replied with a fake casualness in his voice, “I suppose if the lovely young Miss Davis was found to be carrying your child, Matthew, that would be an excellent example of the extenuating circumstances I’d need to marry the two of you. Of course, I can’t help you with that task. That’s a job for you two alone. And if you want to be alone to do that job, I’m not using my private bunk for the next hour. Of course, I’ll deny we ever had this conversation if I’m ever asked about it. My bunk number is 22. Now go fuck each other’s brains out and make a baby right this minute.” Reverend Klein flashed us a naughty grin and then quickly left us alone. For a man of the cloth, the reverend was quite a character!

Melanie and I just looked at one another and smiled. What a wonderful and sexy idea this was! And it was a practical one too! No words needed to be said between us. We ran off, hand-in-hand, to the railroad car that had the private bunks and looked for #22. Since it was the middle of the day, no one else was present to interrupt us from doing what we had to do. Frankly, I was so excited by the idea of bedding beautiful Melanie that I wouldn’t have cared if we had half the train's passengers gawking at us as wide-eyed spectators.

Part Two

After a magical 60 minutes together, Melanie and I reluctantly vacated Bunk #22 after tidying it as best we could. We tracked down Reverend Klein in the dining car, told him what we had so joyfully done. We didn't give him many details, but he understood completely. We asked to be married as soon as it was practical.

He said, “I understand the train will be making a whistle stop in about 40 minutes, so I think there’s no time like the present.”

I found my father next on the train’s observation platform. He was gazing at the vast, flat prairie we were presently traveling through.

"Please come with me, Dad," I said to him as calmly as possible. “You are invited to observe a wedding ceremony that will take place in a few minutes.”

“Whose wedding?” he asked.

“Mine and Melanie’s,” I responded. “We have to get married because she’s pregnant with my child.”

“What!” he exclaimed in absolute shock. “When did this happen?”

I casually looked at my pocket watch and said, “Oh, about half an hour ago, I suppose. It was great fun, too. We thoroughly enjoyed what we did.”

Dad was basically too dumbfounded to object to the marriage. He stood alongside me quietly, serving as my groomsman, as Reverend Klein went through the formalities of marrying Melanie and me in the dining car. Iris happily served as Melanie's maid of honor. Half a dozen total strangers eating lunch served as our witnesses. Melanie and I shared a long, passionate kiss to start our married life.

“Okay, what do we do now?” I asked out loud to anyone who might have an answer.

Dad said we absolutely needed to fill out some CAS documents to cover this highly irregular situation.

“There are official CAS forms for a chaperone marrying an orphan?” I asked with incredulity.

“No,” Dad said without emotion. “I have plenty of blank adoption forms, though. When we get done filling in all the required paperwork, you will have basically adopted 14-year-old Melanie Davis...and then made her your wife.”