“You must excuse me this once,” she cried. “I’m not tear-y as a general thing, but—but, I hadn’t dared to hope—for anything—and it bowled me over. I’ll promise not to do so again; but O, Olga Priest, I’ll never, never forget what you’ve done, as long as I live!”
“It’s not I, it’s Miss Laura. I couldn’t have got you the place.”
“I know, and I’m grateful to Miss Laura, but that isn’t half as much as your letting me come here. I—I won’t be a bother, truly I won’t. But O, it will be so heavenly good to be in reach of somebody who cares even a little bit. You shall not be sorry, Olga—I promise you that.”
“I’m not sorry. I’m glad,” Olga said. “Come now and see the room.”
It was a small room—the one across the hall—and rather shabby, with its matting soiled and torn, its cheap iron bedstead and painted washstand and chairs. Lizette however was quite content with it.
“It’s lots better than the one I have at Rankin’s,” she declared.
But the next day Laura came and saw the room, and then sent word to all the girls except Lizette to come on Wednesday evening to the Camp Fire room and bring their thimbles. And when they came she had some soft curtain material to be hemmed, and some cream linen to be hemstitched. Many fingers made light work, and all was finished that evening, and an appointment made with two of the High School girls for the next Monday afternoon. Then two hours of steady work transformed the bare little room. There was fresh white matting on the floor with a new rag rug before the white enamelled bedstead with its clean new mattress, a chiffonier and washstand of oak, with two chairs, and a tiny round table that could be folded to save room. The soft cream curtains that the girls had hemmed shaded the window, and the linen covers were on the chiffonier and washstand.
“Doesn’t it look fresh and pretty!” Alice Reynolds cried, as she looked around, when all was done.
“I’m sure she’ll like it,” Elsie Harding added.
“Like it?” Olga spoke from the doorway. “You can’t begin to know what it will mean to her. You’d have to see her room at Rankin’s to understand. But that isn’t all. Lizette will believe now that somebody cares.”