Secret Star

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 Coun-cillor James Hill, even as he reluctantly helped her with her enquiries. Councillor 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.