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.