"And for everything I teach her in English I'm going to ask her to teach me a word in Polish! It's such a funny looking language and then it sounds like music! They have lots of awfully exciting stories in their history--Keineth Randolph told us some that her father had told her! And in the next book, let's have pictures of flowers and mountains and water and things like the country, 'cause I guess poor Mrs. Kewpie thinks there aren't such things!"
Prompted by this thought on her next visit Pat carried to the Kewpie kitchen a pink geranium plant. Then she conceived the idea of making the untidy kitchen look as much like Mrs. Quinn's as possible! So interested did she grow in her work that for two afternoons she completely forgot basketball practice, thereby bringing down upon her head the fury of the Captain of the Yellowbirds!
And when Baby Peter fell sick with some digestive disorder, Pat, with the help of the District Nurse, was able to persuade Mrs. Kewpie that a daily bath would reduce the slight fever and to substitute the sweet, fresh milk that the nurse had brought in the place of the coffee she was accustomed to feed the baby.
Now Renée, to her delight, was given an opportunity to share the "good turns."
One afternoon Mrs. Lee, always an angel of kindness and of wide charity, had sought Renée's help. She explained to Renée, as they walked along together, that this was a "case" of her own, and that she was taking her to this house because she thought she might bring a little sunshine into a very lonely life there.
"Poor Mrs. Forrester is very cross and very queer, my dear! No one ever goes to see her now and she lives all alone with a servant almost as old as she is! I thought that if you would go there once in awhile and read to her you might help her pass the long hours."
Mrs. Lee did not add that she hoped the child's quiet, sympathetic manner might waken some tenderness in a heart as cold and dead as stone.
Mrs. Forrester lived in a very old house in an out-of-the-way street. Standing almost concealed by trees and overgrown shrubbery, it looked like some forgotten corner of the big, growing city. The door creaked on its hinges as the untidy old servant grudgingly opened it just far enough to permit them to enter. The rooms were dark, dusty and absolutely bare of any furnishings except a few worn chairs. Not a picture, not a book, not one spot of color was to be seen! There were no curtains at the windows and the cracked dingy-brown shades had been pulled close to the sill as though to forbid one tiny gleam of sunlight filtering through.
Renée thought it the most horrid house she had ever seen and wondered how Mrs. Lee could step into it so cheerfully!
But always tender with old people, she immediately felt sorry for the queer old woman propped up against a pile of pillows in a great, ugly bed.