“Indeed I shall not,” Madge laughingly replied. “I never expect to acquire fame myself, but I do get a great deal of pleasure from my sketching, and now and then I am asked to do a bit of illustrating and so earn extra pin-money, or Roberty-Boberts money, I should say. Some day you must meet little Bob, Eva. You will just love him.”
Then Madge expressed a desire to look about the orphanage and the matron asked Eva to show her friend the building and the grounds. What a happy hour it was for that orphan girl! and Madge, who was patroness of another orphanage, took great interest in seeing how this one was conducted.
Then, arm in arm, these two friends sauntered to the front gate. There stood a little olive-green car, which Eva thought was the prettiest she had ever seen.
“I like it,” Madge exclaimed, “but Brother Everett makes fun of it. His car is as big a one as he could find, and when they stand together in the garage Everett says they look like a giant and a pigmy, so I have named my car Pigmy, and we are the best of comrades. Some day, Eva, you shall go riding with me.”
Then Madge was gone. She wanted to visit Adele’s mother and make further plans for Saturday.
Was ever a week so long? the orphan girl wondered, but at last Saturday dawned bright and sunny. Eva awakened with the feeling that something wonderful was going to happen, and then she remembered! Leaping from her little cot-bed, which was the last of a long row, she looked out of the open window and up at the sky. How gleaming and blue it was! and out in the orchard the birds were singing their happy morning-songs. Eva wished that she too might sing, but even then the dressing-bell was ringing, and the nineteen other orphans who slept in that dormitory were tumbling out of their beds.
“Good morning, Amanda,” Eva said softly to the girl who slept in the cot next her own.
“Good morning,” Amanda replied, but she turned quickly away. She did not want Eva to see that she had been crying in the night.
At breakfast the orphans were allowed to talk, and Eva chattered like a magpie, making every one near her bright and happy, but not once did she tell about her trip to the city, because she did not want the other girls to feel that she was having pleasures which they could not share.
When the orphans had gone about their Saturday-morning tasks, Eva went up to the dormitory to put on her pretty white dress. When she was ready to go, she slipped her mother’s picture out of its hiding-place and whispered, “Oh, mumsie, dear, everybody is so kind to your little girl. Aren’t you glad?”