"We didn't mean to be cruel," she explained, earnestly, answering the one of Fraulein's charges which had most impressed her. "We love Ivan. We love him lots. We like to see him to be a sunbeam, an' we thought he liked to be one. He never said he didn't."
The faces of his little companions were all around him. Ivan surveyed them in turn. They loved him—lots. Had not Josephine just said so? And only yesterday Augustus Adolphus had played marbles with him. It was very good to be loved, to have a home, and not to be a little sunbeam any longer. Then his eyes met those of Miss Clarkson, fixed upon him sympathetically.
"Would you like to go away, Ivan?" she asked, quietly. "Would you be happier somewhere else?"
The eyes of Ivan widened with sudden fear. To have this and to lose it!—now, if ever, he must speak! "Oh no," he cried, earnestly; "no, no, madam!"
Reassured, she smiled at him, and as she did so something in her look, in the atmosphere, in the moment, opened the boy's closed heart. He drew a long breath and smiled back at her—a shy, hesitant, unaccustomed smile, but one very charming on his serious little face. Miss Clarkson's heart leaped in sudden triumph. It was his first smile, and it was for her.
"I like it here," he said. "I like it very much, madam."
Miss Clarkson had moments of wisdom.
"Then you shall stay, my boy," she said. "You shall stay as long as you wish. But, remember, you must not be a sunbeam any more."
Ivan responded in one word—a simple, effective word, much used by his associates in response to pleasing announcements of holidays and vacations, but thus far a stranger on his lips. He threw back his head and straightened his shoulders.
"Hurray!" he cried, with deep fervor. This was enough for Augustus Adolphus and the fair Josephine. "Hurray!" they shrieked, in jubilant duet—"Hurray! Hurray!"