"She must be a dandy, then," was the response of Micky O'Brady, on whom she bestowed one, taking it up awkwardly in his left hand. His right one was still in a sling, and one leg had just been taken out of a plaster cast, for he had been run over by a heavy truck, and narrowly escaped being made a cripple for life. Elise stopped to question him about his accident, and found that despite his crippled leg a pair of skates was what he wished for above all things. While she was chattering away to him like a little magpie, Kitty and Allison went on down the room with their roses. It was not the first time they had been there, and they knew some of the children by name. But it was all new to Lloyd. In the next room the sight of the white little faces, some of them drawn with pain, almost brought the tears to her eyes.
There were only six beds in this ward, and at the last one Lloyd laid a rose down very softly, because in that bed the little invalid lay on one side as if she were asleep. But as the perfume of the great American Beauty reached her, she opened her eyes and smiled weakly. Lloyd was so startled that she dropped the rest of the roses to the floor and clasped both hands around the bedpost. For the eyes that smiled up at her, keen and gray with their curly black lashes, might have been Molly's own, they were so like hers. The black hair brushed back from the white face waved over the left temple exactly as Molly's did. There were the same straight black eyebrows and the familiar droop of the pretty little mouth, and it seemed to Lloyd, as she stared at her with a fascinated gaze, that it was Molly herself who lay there white and wan. Only a much smaller Molly, with a sad, hopeless little face, as if the battle with life had proved too hard, and she was slowly giving it up.
"'OH, WHAT IS YOUR NAME?'"
The child, still smiling, weakly raised her bony little hand to lift the rose from the pillow, and even the gesture with which she laid it against her cheek was familiar.
"Oh, what is your name?" cried Lloyd, forgetting that she had been told not to talk in that room.
"The people I lived with last called me Muggins," said the child, faintly, "but a long time ago it used to be Dot."
As she spoke she turned her head so that both sides of her face were visible, and Lloyd saw that across the right eyebrow was a thin white scar.
"Oh, I knew it!" cried Lloyd, under her breath. "I knew it the minute I looked at you!" Then to the child's astonishment, without waiting to pick up the fallen roses, she ran breathlessly into the hall.
"Mothah! Mrs. Walton!" she cried, breaking into their conversation with one of the nurses. "Come quick, I've found her! It's really, truly Dot! She says that is her name, and she looks exactly like Molly. Oh, do come and see her!"