“Humph!” grunted Olga, the hardness melting out of her black eyes as she looked into Elizabeth’s wistful blue ones.
It was finally agreed that the three High School girls, Frances Chapin, Elsie Harding, and Alice Reynolds, with Mary Hastings, Annie Pearson, and Rose, should go with Miss Laura to the hospital.
“I c’n see kids enough at home any time,” Lena Barton declared airily. “I’d rather walk down the avenue on Sunday than go to any hospital.”
“I guess I’ll be excused too,” said Louise Johnson. “Hospital visiting isn’t exactly in my line. I’ve a hunch that I’d be out of place amongst a lot of sick kiddies. But I’ll agree to be satisfied with any blue-eyed baby girl you and Miss Laura pick out for our Camp Fire Kid. Say, girlies”—she looked around the group—“I move we make those seven our choosing committee—Miss Laura, chairman, of course.”
“But, Johnny,” one girl objected, “maybe they won’t find any girl to fit our pattern over at the hospital.”
“It is not at all likely that we shall,” Laura hastened to add, “and if we did, it would probably be one with parents or relatives to care for it after it leaves the hospital.”
“Blue-eyed angel babies, with dimples, don’t come in every package. I s’pose you’d want one with dimples too?” Eva Bicknell scoffed.
“O, of course, dimples. Might as well have all the ear-marks of a beauty to begin with, anyhow,” giggled Louise. “She’ll probably develop into a homely little freckle-faced imp by the time she’s six, anyhow.”
“There’s worse things in the world than freckles,” snapped Lena Barton, whose perky little nose was well spattered with them.
“So there are, Lena—so there are,” Louise teased. “Yours will probably fade out by the time you’re forty.”