Little Friend Lydia

“WE’LL ASK HER FOR A DRINK,” RESPONDED SAMMY, NEVER AT A LOSS
Little Friend Lydia
ETHEL CALVERT PHILLIPS
With Illustrations by
EDITH F. BUTLER
Boston and New York HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ETHEL CALVERT PHILLIPS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Illustrations
Little Friend Lydia
It was Christmas Eve, and twenty little boys and girls were watching for Santa Claus. Ten little boys in blue-striped blouses and dark-blue neckties, ten little girls in blue-checked aprons and dark-blue hair-ribbons fixed their eyes on the big folding doors and thought the time for them to open would never come.
All day long excitement had reigned supreme in the Children’s Home, a roomy comfortable house set on the very edge of the big city, and where were gathered the motherless and fatherless children who found love and care under its hospitable roof. Each ring of the doorbell brought chattering groups to hang over the banisters, each sound of wheels on the driveway was the signal for excited faces to be pressed against the window-pane and for round eyes to try in vain to bore through the paper wrappings of mysterious bundles whisked out of sight all too soon. Peeks through the parlor keyhole were forbidden, but passing the door on the way to luncheon several children were seen to stop and sniff the air as though they might actually smell out the secret.