"I hope it will be soon. And, Miss Eleanor, I've been waiting a long time to find out about myself, too. Sometimes I think I'm worse off than Zara, because I don't know where my father and mother are, or even what became of them."
The Guardian started.
"Poor Bessie!" she said. "But we'll have to try to find out for you. There are ways of doing that that the Hoovers would never think of. And I'm sure there'll be some explanation. They'd never just go away and leave you, without trying to find out if you were well and look after you."
"Not if they could help it, Miss Eleanor." Bessie's eyes filled with tears. "But perhaps they couldn't. Perhaps they are—dead."
"We must try to be cheerful, Bessie. After all, you know, they say no news is good news, and when you don't positively know that something dreadful has happened, you can always go on hoping."
"Oh, I do, Miss Eleanor! Sometimes I've felt so bad that if I hadn't been able to hope, I don't know what I'd have done. And Jake Hoover, he used to laugh at me, and say that I'd never see them again. He said they were just bad people, glad to get rid of me, but I never believed that."
"That's right, Bessie. You keep on hoping, and we'll do all we can to make your hopes true. Hope is a wonderful thing for people who are in trouble. They can always hope that things will be better, and if they only hope hard enough, they will come to believe it. And once you believe a thing, it's half true, especially when it's a question of doing something."
"How do you mean?"
"Why, I'll try to explain. When Mrs. Chester first wanted me to take charge of a Camp Fire, I thought I was just a silly, stupid, useless girl. But she said she knew I wasn't, and that I could make myself useful."
"You certainly have."