Lizette searched the other’s face with eyes in which sharp suspicion gradually changed into half incredulous joy. “Well,” she said slowly, “if one living soul cares even a little bit what happens to me, I’ll try to pull through somehow. The Camp Fire’s the only thing that has made life endurable to me this past year, and I haven’t enjoyed that so awfully much, for nobody there seems to really care—I just hang on to the edges.”
“Miss Laura cares.”
“O, in a way, because I belong to her Camp Fire—that’s all,” returned Lizette moodily.
“No, she cares—really,” Olga persisted, but Lizette answered only by an incredulous lift of her thin, sandy brows.
“I must go now,” she said, rising, and with her hands on Olga’s shoulders she added, “You don’t know what this evening here has meant to me. I—was about at the end of my rope.”
“I’m glad you came,” Olga spoke heartily, “and you are coming again Thursday. Maybe I’ll have something then to tell you, but if I don’t, anyhow, we’ll have supper together and a talk after it.”
To that Lizette answered nothing, but the look in her eyes sent a little thrill of happiness through Olga’s heart.
Olga carried the bit of linen to Laura the next evening, and told her what she had learned of Lizette’s hard life.
“Poor child!” Miss Laura said. “I imagined something like this. We must find other work for her. Perhaps I can get her into Miss Bayly’s Art Store. She would not have to be on her feet so much there, and would have a chance to learn embroidery if she really has any aptitude for it. I know Miss Bayly very well, and I think I can arrange it to have Lizette work there for six months. That would be long enough to give her a chance.”
“Would she get any pay?” Olga asked.