Leaving Anne at a Richmond hotel, Mr. Patterson drove to an orphanage on
the outskirts of the city. He had wired the superintendent that he was
coming and had brought letters and papers from the Washington office of
the Associated Charities. He told Miss Farlow, the superintendent, the
story of the child, without mentioning the jewel affair.
"Let them find her out for themselves," he reflected. "I'll not start
her off with a handicap."
As he went out of the bare, spotless sitting-room into the bare,
spotless hall, the children of the 'Home' filed past, two by two, for
their afternoon walk. There were twenty-six sober-faced girls in blue
cotton frocks and broad-brimmed straw hats.
"They take exercise regularly, sir," said the superintendent. "We're
careful with them in all ways. They're well-fed, kept neat, taught good
manners, and have all pains taken with their education and training. We
do our best for them and try to get them good homes."
"I am sure of that." Good heavens!--how he would hate his child to be
one of the twenty-six! Poor little Anne! Mr. Patterson caught himself up
impatiently. He was no more responsible for her than for any, or all, of
the others. If his wife had lived--but he--a widower, whose job kept him
thousands of miles away from home most of the time,--it was unreasonable
to expect him to keep an orphan girl whom his family had picked up. Ugh!
How he'd hate to trot along in that blue-frocked line! "I'm a dawdling
idiot," he said irritatedly to himself. "What am I worrying about? I've
done the sensible thing, the only possible thing. Her own people
deserted her. I've secured her a decent home and honest training. Whew!
It's later than I thought. I'll have to rush to make that four-ten
train."
An hour later, having given hurried explanations to Anne and started her
off in a cab, he was on a north-bound train.
And Anne?
The bewildered child gathered only one fact from his speech. She was not
going to Miss Drayton, as she had expected--dear Miss Drayton, to whom
she longed to pour forth her secret. Instead, she was going to
strangers--people, Mr. Patterson said, who took care of little girls
that had no fathers and mothers.
She hugged Honey-Sweet tight in her arms and walked up the steps of the
square brown house.
If you have never seen the 'Home for Girls,' you will wish me to
describe Anne's new abode. Let me see. I have said that the house was
square and brown, haven't I? with many green-shuttered windows. The
grounds were large and well-kept--almost too spick and span, for one
expects twenty-six children to leave behind them such marks of good
times as paper dolls and picture-books, croquet-mallets and tennis balls
on trampled turf.
The brick walk led straight between rows of neatly-clipped box to the
front door. In the grass plot on the right, there was a circle of
scarlet geraniums and on the left there was a circle of scarlet
verbenas. On one side of the porch, there was a neatly-trimmed rose-bush
with straggling yellow blossoms, and on the other side there was a white
rose-bush.
The front door was open. Anne saw a long, narrow hall with whitewashed
walls and a bare, clean floor. A curtain which screened the back of the
hall fluttered in the breeze, and disclosed a long rack holding
twenty-six pairs of overshoes, and above them, each on its own hook,
twenty-six straw hats. Anne counted them while she waited and her heart
sank--why, she could not have told. She knew that no matter how long she
might live, she would never, never, never want a broad-brimmed straw hat
with a blue ribbon round it. A subdued clatter of knives and forks came
from a room at the back. Anne reflected that this place seemed more like
a boarding-school than a home. How odd it was to have a sign over the
door saying that it was a 'Home'! And 'for Girls.' How did the people
choose that their children were to be just girls?
While she was thinking these things, the cabman put her trunk down on
the porch, rang the bell, and stamped down the steps. No use waiting
here for a fee. A door at the back of the hall opened, and there came
forward a girl with a scrubbed-looking face and a blue-and-white gingham
apron over a blue cotton frock. She fixed her round china-blue eyes on
Anne, and waited for her to speak.
Anne opened her mouth and then shut it again. She did not know what to
say. The blue-aproned girl caught sight of the trunk.
"Oh, you're a new one!" she exclaimed.
She was so positive that Anne did not like to disagree with her. "I--I
reckon I'm newer than I'm old," she said politely.
The girl grinned. "You come to stay, ain't you? That your trunk?"
"Yes," stammered Anne. "Mr. Patterson says--there's a lady here--"
"You want to see Miss Farlow. She's the superintendent," explained the
girl, still grinning. "Just you wait in the office till she comes from
supper--" and she opened a door on the right. "My! didn't that cabman
leave a lot of mud on the steps?--and tracks on the porch? Mollie'll
have to scrub it again. She'll be so mad!"
The next day there was a new pair of overshoes on the rack, and instead
of twenty-six, there were twenty-seven broad-brimmed, blue-ribboned
hats.
After all, Anne was not unhappy in her new surroundings. She missed
cheery Miss Drayton and mischievous Pat, of course, but they seemed so
far away from the sober life of the institution that she accepted
without wonder the fact that she heard nothing from either of them. The
past year was like a dream. Anne felt sometimes as if she had been at
the 'Home' forever and forever. She soon solved, to her own satisfaction
and Honey-Sweet's, the meaning of the name 'Home for Girls.' "It's one
of the words that means it isn't the thing it says," she explained.
"Like butterfly. That isn't a fly and it doesn't make butter. And 'Home
for Girls' means that it isn't a home at all, but a schooly,
outside-sort-of place."
The girls lacked mothering, it is true, but they were governed kindly
though strictly. The simple fare was wholesome and the daily round of
work, study, and exercise brought the children to it with healthy
appetites. It being vacation time, the schoolroom was closed. But each
girl had household tasks, which she was required to perform with
accuracy, neatness, and despatch.
"The world is full of dawdlers and half-doers," said Miss Farlow,
wisely. "Their ranks are crowded. But there is always good work and good
pay for those who have the habit of doing work well--be it baking
puddings or writing Greek grammars. I want my girls to form the habit of
well-doing."
Anne always listened with respect to Miss Farlow. She was one of the
grown-ups that it seemed must always have been grown up. You would have
amazed Anne if you had told her that Miss Farlow was still young and,
with her fresh color, good features, and soft, abundant hair, really
ought to be pretty. But there were anxious lines around the eyes and
mouth, and the hair was always drawn straight back so as to show at its
worst the high, knobby forehead. Poor, patient, earnest, hard-working
Miss Farlow! She was brought face to face with much of the world's need
and longed to remove it all and was able to relieve so little. She had
at her disposal funds to support twenty homeless girls. Because she
could not bear to turn away one needing help, she was always saving and
scrimping so as to take care of more. One cannot wonder that she found
life serious and solemn. Yet if only she had known how to laugh and
forget her work sometimes, she might have done more good as well as been
happier herself.
From the first, Anne was a puzzle to the sober-minded lady. A few days
after Anne entered the home, she was sent into the office to be
reproved. Slim and erect in her short blue frock, she stood before the
superintendent. Miss Farlow looked at the slip of paper from the pupil
teacher: "Anne Lewis; disorderly; laughed aloud in the Sunday study
class."
"Why did you laugh during the Bible lesson, Anne Lewis?" asked Miss
Farlow. She always called each girl by her full name. "You knew that it
was naughty, did you not?"
"I did not mean to be naughty," said Anne, penitently. "I just laughed
at myself."
"Laughed at yourself?" Miss Farlow was puzzled.
"I was thinking," Anne explained. "My eyes were half-shut and--it was
the way the light was shining--I could see us all from our chins down in
the shiny desk. Then I thought, suppose all the mirrors in the world
were broken so we could never see our faces! We'd never know whether we
were ourselves or one of the other girls--we're so exactly alike, you
know. And I thought how funny it would be not to know whether you were
yourself or some one else, and maybe comb some one else's hair when you
meant to get the tangles out of your own--and I laughed out loud."
Miss Farlow did not smile. "What a queer, foolish thing that was for you
to think!" she said. "I will not punish you this time, since you did not
mean to be naughty. But if you do such a thing again, I must take away
your Saturday afternoon holiday."
That would be a severe punishment, for the girls dearly loved the
freedom of the long Saturday afternoons. From early dinner until
teatime, they amused themselves as they pleased, indoors or on the
'Home' grounds, under the general oversight of a pupil-teacher.