"Oh, dear, oh, dear, these changes are most too much for me, I declare!" she cried. "I mean changes-back is. The change that brought you here, Miss Moss, was just sweet. Only I wish it had turned into a stay."
Elsie drew the little thing close to her. At the moment she herself almost wished it had been a stay.
"I wonder if that's my hard," prattled the child. "Mother says everybody, even rich people, have hard things to bear. Do you bleeve so, Miss Moss?"
Elsie looked startled.
"Why, Mattie, I hardly know," she faltered. "Ye-es, I suppose every one does, really."
"Even you, Miss Moss?"
Elsie couldn't answer. On a sudden that first day she and Elsie Moss had been together came back to her. She recalled Elsie's fresh grief for the death of her mother and her own sense of remissness, and the class motto that signified through hardships to the stars. Since she had been at Enderby, things had been disagreeable enough almost to make up for her former immunity. And yet, she hadn't been here ten days, and she didn't really have to endure it. Furthermore, she was to escape from it very shortly.
"No, Mattie, I don't believe I have had so much that is hard as most people have," she owned.
"You are like the princess, you see," murmured the child. "But I s'pose you feel awfully sorry about your auntie being so poorly? When mother was sick once I felt as bad here as if I had the stomachache hard."
Elsie evaded the issue by hoping politely that the little girl's mother was quite well now.