"Here she comes!" roared Mr. Tisbett. The townspeople, hurrying to
Badgertown depot to see the train bearing the new little girl sent on by
Mrs. Fisher to their parson's care, crowded up, Mr. and Mrs. Henderson
smilingly in the center of the biggest group.
"Oh, husband, I do pity her so!" breathed the parson's wife. "Poor thing, she will be so shy and distressed!" The parson's heart gave a responsive thrill, as he craned his neck to peer here and there for their new charge. "She hasn't come. Oh, dear me!"—as a voice broke in at his elbow.
"I'm here." The words weren't much, to be sure, but the tone was wholly self-possessed, and when the parson whirled around, and Mrs. Henderson, who had been looking the other way, brought her gaze back, they saw a little girl in a dark brown suit, a brown hat under which fell smooth braids of black hair, who was regarding them with a pair of the keenest eyes they had either of them ever seen.
"Oh—oh—my child—" stammered Mr. Henderson, putting out a kind hand. "So you have come, Rachel?"
"Yes, I am Rachel," said the child, looking up into his face and laying her hand in the parson's big one; then she turned her full regard upon the minister's wife.
Mrs. Henderson was divided in her mind, for an instant, whether to kiss this self-possessed child, as she had fully arranged in her mind beforehand to do, or to let such a ceremony go by. But in a breathing space she had her arms about her, and was drawing her to her breast.
"Rachel, dear, I am so glad you have come to us."
Rachel glanced up sharply, heaved a big sigh, and when she lifted her head from Mrs. Henderson's neck, there was something bright that glistened in either eye; she brushed it off before any one could spy it, as the parson was saying:
"And now, where is your bag, child—er—Rachel, I mean?"
Rachel pointed to the end of the platform. "I'll go an' tell 'em to bring it here."