“I can make nice horse-reins on a spool, Father,” said she, proud of her accomplishment.
“I know you can,” said Mr. Blake. “But I was wondering if Friend Morris wouldn’t like a picture of you dressed like a little Quaker girl. Mother will make the dress, just like the one Friend Morris wore when she was a little girl. I will paint the picture, and you shall give it to her. I believe Friend Morris would like that present.”
“I think she would too,” said Lydia, who herself liked the idea of dressing up. “It’s much nicer than horse-reins.”
So Mother made a little gray dress, with a white kerchief, and a white cap. And over the cap Lydia wore a little gray Quaker bonnet.
Then every afternoon, she stood very still while Mr. Blake painted the picture, looking from Lydia to the canvas and back again at Lydia.
“Couldn’t Miss Puss be in the picture, too?” asked Lydia. “She is all gray and white, just like me.”
So Miss Puss was put in the picture, sitting as still as could be at Lydia’s feet. Mr. Blake worked quickly, and so the picture was soon finished, and it happened that the very next day Lydia had a party. Mary Ellen and Sammy and Polly and little Tom were coming with Miss Martin to spend the afternoon.
When Lydia saw the children walking up the street, their friendly faces shining with soap and water and happy smiles, she hopped up and down in the window and waved both hands in greeting. If she had been a boy she would have turned a somersault, I know.
“Is this our quiet little Lydia?” Miss Martin asked Mrs. Blake, with a laugh. “What have you done to her?”
For Lydia was dragging the children into her bedroom, and telling them of Mother and Father and Miss Puss, and bidding them look at Lucy Locket’s cradle, and the doll carriage, and the picture-books, all in one breath, and before they even had time to take off their hats and coats. From the noise, and the confusion, and the rushing about, and the sound of many voices all talking at once, as Lydia took them from one end to the other of that little house, you might have thought that all twenty children from the Children’s Home had come visiting instead of four!