“I wish you could,” said Nora earnestly. “I try to be like other girls, but somehow I can’t. I seem always to have a sort of weight on my heart.”
“Nora, isn’t there something you would like that I haven’t done for you? Haven’t you a wish?”
“Oh!” cried Nora, “I can’t wish for anything, you make me too happy, but”—she hesitated, and tears began to fall fast—“I can’t forget my old life, it comes back in my dreams, it is always before me. I don’t want to tell you, but I must. I can’t help thinking about the many miserable girls, such as I was, living in horrid shanties, starved, frozen, beaten, wretched.”
“Then you have a wish?” said Miss Barnes softly.
“Oh, it seems so ungrateful!” Nora sobbed. “Such a poor return for the life you have given me! I have tried to forget. I can’t tell what is right for me to do. I’m sorry I said anything.”
“No, Nora,” said Miss Barnes promptly. “You should tell me all your wishes and feelings. If they are wrong, I can help you outgrow them; if right”—she hesitated—“why, I must help you.”
Nora fell on her knees with the most impulsive movement Miss Barnes, had ever seen.
“Oh, I do believe you are an angel!”
“Far from it, Nora,” said Miss Barnes smiling, “but I’ve set out to make you happy, and if I find whims and notions in your head, I suppose I’ll have to follow them out. But seriously, dear child, I must say I have had a little uneasy feeling of responsibility in my heart ever since I’ve had you. And there’s nothing to hinder my being as odd as I please, and now let me hear your plans.”
“I have no plans. I have only longings to do something for them.”