"We did; we did," they exclaimed so earnestly that any doubts she may have felt about the cordiality of their reception of her nursling were banished at once.
"Your mother?" she asked.
"I don't believe Mother really expected it to come, any more than we did," replied Helen frankly, "but she will love it just as we will, and we'll take the very best of care of her."
She offered her finger to Elisabeth, who clutched it and gazed solemnly at her out of her sunken blue eyes.
Ethel Blue in the back of the group gave a sob.
"She'll pick up soon when she has good food every day," the nurse reassured them, and then she told them of her own experiences.
She had been, it seemed, in the same hospital with Mademoiselle in Belgium. Out on the field one day a bit of shrapnel had wounded her foot so that she was forced to come home. Mademoiselle had asked her to bring over this mite "to the kindest young people in the world," and here she was.
The baby's father and mother were both dead, she went on. That she knew.
"Are you sure her name is Elisabeth?" asked Dorothy.
"That's what she calls herself."