“Oh, do you think they carried him to a hospital?”
“They took him somewhere where he was taken care of, or he would not be coming home on the noon train,” said Mrs. Anderson. “It is almost time for you to get up, and I want you to drink another cup of coffee. You came here without any hat, didn't you, poor child?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I haven't got any hat, and you can't wear one of my bonnets, but I have a pretty white head-tie that you can wear; and nobody will see you in the closed carriage, anyway.”
“I am making so much trouble,” said Charlotte.
“You precious child!” said Mrs. Anderson; “when I think of you all alone in that house!”
“It was dreadful,” Charlotte said, with a shudder. “I suppose there was nothing at all to be afraid of, but I imagined all kinds of things.”
“The things people imagine are more to be afraid of than the things they see, sometimes,” Mrs. Anderson said, wisely. “Now, I think perhaps you had better get up, dear, and you must drink another cup of coffee. I think there will be just about time enough for you to drink it and get dressed before the carriage comes.”
Mrs. Anderson took the pride in assisting the girl to dress that she had done in dressing her son when he was a child. She even noticed, with the tenderest commiseration instead of condemnation, that the lace on her undergarments was torn, and that there were buttons missing.
“Poor dear child, she never had any decent training,” she said to herself. She anticipated teaching Charlotte to take care of her clothes, as she might have done if she had been her own girl baby. “I guess her clothes won't look like this when I have had her awhile,” she said to herself, eying furtively some torn lace on the girl's slender white shoulder.