“I guess you don’t know me; do you?” asked the child, looking up from under long, black lashes at Dorothy. Those lashes, and the velvety black eyes they almost hid, were all the really pretty features the child possessed. She was not plump enough to be pretty of form, and the expression of her features was too shrewd and worldly-wise to make a child of her age attractive.
“I guess you don’t know me; do you?” she repeated, looking in a sly little way at Dorothy.
“Oh, yes, I do,” declared Dorothy Dale, laughing outright. “You are Celia Moran,” she added, remembering the name the sour-faced woman had used.
“But you don’t know where I come from?”
The ugly gingham uniform she wore told that story only too well. Dorothy became grave at once.
“You come from some orphan asylum, my dear.”
“From the Findling,” said the little girl, pursing up her lips and nodding.
“From a foundling asylum?”
“Yes’m. But I wasn’t really a ‘findling.’ I didn’t come there like the babies do. I was two an’ a ha’f years old when they took me in. That ain’t no baby; is it?”
“Two and a half? Why, that’s a big girl,” agreed Dorothy.