"Nothing to do is a dreadful complaint," Eliot had said a few moments before the boy brought up the letter. "You break one of the commandments every day you live, Miss Eugenia."
"How can you say such a thing?" demanded Eugenia, indignantly. "I don't lie or steal or murder, or do any of those things it says not to."
"It isn't any of the 'thou shalt nots,'" said Eliot, determined to speak her mind, now that she had started. "It is a shalt. 'Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work.' It is plain talk, Miss Eugenia, but there's nobody else to say it, and I feel that it ought to be said. More than three-fourths of your life you are miserable because you are doing nothing but grumbling and trying to kill time. You needn't be unhappy at all if you'd look around you and see some of the world's work lying around waiting for just such hands as yours to take hold of it."
"Oh, don't be so preachy!" pouted Eugenia, impatiently.
It was just at this point that the Little Colonel's letter was brought in, and the sight of the familiar handwriting made Eugenia's face brighten as if by magic.
"One from Betty, too," she cried, as a second closely written sheet dropped into her lap. Then forgetting her impatience with Eliot's preaching, she began reading aloud the news from the Cuckoo's Nest. It was the same pathetic little tale that had touched the hearts of the birthday banqueters, circled around the glowing bonfire, and it moved Eugenia to pity, just as it had moved all who listened at the little brown house.
Eugenia folded up the letters, and slipped them back into the envelope. "If I were down there at the Cuckoo's Nest with Lloyd and Betty, there would be something for me to do. I'd find Molly's sister even if I had to spend all my year's allowance to employ a detective. Poor, lonesome little thing! I've taken a fancy to that girl. Maybe it is on account of her name being the same as Molly Blythe's. Even for no other reason than that I would be glad to help her."
"You don't have to go travelling to find lonely people, Miss Eugenia," said Eliot, who seemed to have much on her mind that afternoon, and a determination to share it with Eugenia. "All the aching hearts don't belong to little orphans, and some of the loneliest people in the world touch elbows with you every day."
"Who, for instance?" demanded Eugenia, unbelievingly. "I never saw them." Then, without waiting for an answer, she sprang up and glanced into the mirror, and gave a few hasty touches to her hair and belt. "Bring me my hat, Eliot, and get into your bonnet. I'm going out to Riverdale. I'm sure I can find the picture they wrote about somewhere in the seminary library. They always save the old files of illustrated papers. I'm wild to see what that picture looks like that Molly made such a fuss about, and it will give me some amusement for the afternoon."
Little Miss Gray, the librarian at the Riverdale Seminary, looked up in surprise when Eugenia came rustling into the reading-room an hour later. It was the first time she had been in that term. It was a half-holiday, and up to that time no one had come in all the afternoon. Sitting by the window, cataloguing new books, Miss Gray had looked out from time to time, wishing that she, too, could have a half-holiday, and that she could change places with some of the care-free schoolgirls outside on the campus. She could see them strolling along the shady avenues by twos and threes and fours, never one alone. The sight made her feel even more lonely than usual. She looked up eagerly at the sound of the approaching footsteps, glad of any companionship, but shrank back timidly when she saw who was rustling toward her. Eugenia had always had such a supercilious air in asking for a book, that she disliked to wait on her.