The Little Colonel's Holidays

by Annie F. Johnston

But to-day Eugenia came forward so intent on her errand that she forgot to be haughty, and asked for the old volume of Harper's Weeklies as eagerly as a little girl asking for a picture-book.

"That's the date," she said, handing Miss Gray a slip of paper. "Oh, I do hope you have it. You see the girls wrote such an interesting account of the little waif that I'm anxious to have the picture. It will be so nice to know that I'm looking at the same thing they saw in Molly's room.

"What a little morsel of misery!" she exclaimed, as Miss Gray opened the volume. "Isn't it pitiful? I never would have imagined that a real child could be so forlorn and miserable as this if the girls hadn't written about it. I thought such tales were made up by newspapers and magazines, just for something to write about."

Before she realised that she was taking the little librarian into her confidence, she was pouring out the story of Molly and Dot as if she were talking to one of the girls. When she finished Miss Gray turned her head away, but Eugenia saw two tears splash down on the table.

"Excuse my taking it so much to heart," said Miss Gray, with a smile, as she wiped away the tell-tale drops, "but it seems so real to me that I couldn't help it. I'm like the little lost sister, you know. Not ragged and torn and poverty-stricken like the waif in the picture, for this position gives me all the comforts of life, but I'm just as much alone in the world as she. When I am busy I never think of it; but sometimes the thought sweeps over me like a great overwhelming wave,—I'm all alone in this big, strange city, only a drop in the bucket, with nobody to care whether I fare ill or well."

Eugenia did not know how to answer. She thought this must be one of the people whom Eliot meant, who touched elbows with her every day. Stirred by a great pity and a desire to comfort this gentle-faced little woman whose big blue eyes were as appealing as a baby's, and whose voice was as mournful as a dove's, Eugenia stood a moment in awkward silence. She wished that Betty could be there to say the right thing at the right time, as she always did, or that, better still, she had Betty's way of comforting people. Then a thought came to her like an inspiration.

"Oh, Miss Gray! Maybe if you have so much sympathy for the little lost child, you'd take an interest in helping me find her. Nobody knows where her father took her. He sent word that he had left Louisville, and there is no telling where he has drifted. They are as likely to be here in New York as anywhere. Maybe if we went around to all the orphanages and hospitals and free kindergartens we could find some trace of her. Papa won't let me go out in the city alone, and Eliot is such a stick about going to strange places. She always loses her head and gets flustered and makes a mess of everything. Oh, would you mind going?"

"Any day after four o'clock," exclaimed Miss Gray eagerly, "and on Wednesdays the library closes at one."

"We'll begin next Wednesday," said Eugenia. "Come and take lunch with me at the Waldorf, and we can get an early start. Oh, I'll be so much obliged to you."

Before Miss Gray could say anything more, she had rustled out into the hall where Eliot sat waiting. The little librarian was left to clasp her hands in silent delight over the thought of such a lark as a lunch at the Waldorf and an afternoon's outing with the wealthiest and most exclusive girl in the Seminary.