MARY ELIZABETH
Mary Elizabeth was a little girl with a long name. She was poor, she was sick, she was ragged, she was dirty, she was cold, she was hungry, she was frightened. She had no home, she had no mother, she had no father. She had no supper, she had had no dinner, she had had no breakfast. She had no place to go and nobody to care where she went.
In fact, Mary Elizabeth had not much of anything but a short pink calico dress, a little red cotton-and-wool shawl, and her long name. Besides this, she had a pair of old rubbers, too large for her.
She was walking up Washington Street. It was late in the afternoon of a bitter January day.
"God made so many people," thought Mary Elizabeth, "He must have made so many suppers. Seems as if there'd ought to be one for one extry little girl."
But she thought this in a gentle way. She was a very gentle little girl. All girls who hadn't anything were not like Mary Elizabeth.
So now she was shuffling up Washington Street, not knowing exactly what to do next,—peeping into people's faces, timidly looking away from them, heart-sick (for a very little girl can be very heart-sick), colder, she thought, every minute, and hungrier each hour than she was the hour before.
The child left Washington Street at last, where everybody had homes and suppers without one extra one to spare for a little girl, and turned into a short, bright, showy street, where stood a great hotel.