“Yes,” answered Frieda proudly. “I have read seven English books, and I like that best. Mother and I made a list of Poor Things the way Leonard did.”
“O, how nice!” cried Hannah. “Did you put Bertha’s lame sister on it?”
“Yes, and Onkel Heinrich’s brother who can not 146 see and is always cheerful, and the little woman who sells string and roses in the shop under us, and Edna Helm who had to stop school and go to work because her father couldn’t afford to take care of her.”
“Poor Edna!” said Hannah. “I liked her best of all your friends. I’m going to start a Poor Things book myself, when I get home.”
“Have you ever heard of the Guild of Brave Poor Things in England?” asked Miss Lyndesay, and as the girls showed their interest she went on to tell them of the organization which took its name and its motive from Mrs. Ewing’s little story, and has grown into a large organization with industrial schools and shops.
“So all these people, boys and men and women and girls who cannot work in factories, because of some infirmity, are enabled to make beautiful things and to sell them. I bought some of their doll furniture when I was last in London. Let me see. Yes, it was in the box I unpacked yesterday.”
“Let me get it,” begged Frieda, and as soon as she had been told where to look she was off. She came quickly back again bringing a doll’s white-wood bed, strong and well-made as the fine old furniture which had outlived Aunt Abigail and her parents.
“It is just right for Millicent’s doll,” cried Frieda, as she brought it in. “Couldn’t we put her in it, 147 Tante Clara, to make up for having torn the pretty dresses?”
“Indeed you may. I had no one in mind to give it to, but bought it because I had enjoyed visiting the school at Chailey.”
“Can all the cripples make pretty things like this?” asked Hannah, wondering, as Frieda placed the bed in her hands.