Susan climbed up on the window-sill, and, covered with dust and dirt, pushed and pulled until she was quite out of breath.
“I can’t,” she gasped. “I can’t open it. What shall we do?”
Gentilla’s face puckered up at sight of Susan’s distress. She ran back to the door and beat upon it with her soft little fists.
“You open, you open,” called Gentilla, in a pitiful little pipe that would have moved a heart of stone.
Susan wanted to cry. There was a big lump in her throat, and it was only vigorous winking and blinking that kept the tears from falling down her cheeks.
But Susan was repeating to herself something she had overheard Grandmother say to Miss Liza that very afternoon.
“Susan is a real little mother to Gentilla,” Grandmother had said.
And, at the time, Susan had thought, “If Gentilla ever falls into the fire or tumbles down the well, I must be the one to pull her out.”
And she had almost hoped that something of the kind might happen, so that she might show how brave she was, and how devoted to her little friend.
Surely now the time had come. Perhaps they would have to stay forever in the schoolhouse. Without anything to eat they would grow thinner and thinner and thinner until there would be nothing left of them at all. At this doleful thought, one tear rolled down Susan’s nose and splashed on the dusty boards. But only one! For she swallowed hard, gave herself a little shake, and then took Gentilla by the hand.