Some time later, with a red, heated face, the young girl emerged from the room, dragging a little white-robed figure by the hand, whose face was, strange to say, wreathed in dimples. “Here, dear, you get into Miss Natty’s bed,” said the girl, leading the child into her room, “and brother will stay with you until I return,” motioning to Danny, who had been waiting outside the bathroom, with a strange, worried look on his face.
“Oh, mother,” exclaimed Nathalie a moment later, as she came rushing out to the porch. “What do you think? Oh, I never was so surprised in my life!”
“Why, Nathalie, what is the matter with you?” ejaculated Janet, as she placed her arm caressingly around the girl. “You are as white as a ghost, and you’re all of a tremble.”
“Oh, I’ve had such a scare,—such a terrible surprise,” stammered the girl. And then she broke into a little laugh as she cried: “Oh, mother, you know the littlest chap? Well, he isn’t a boy at all; he’s a girl!”
“A girl!” echoed three voices simultaneously, and then Mrs. Page gave a laugh, a laugh in which every one joined.
It did not take Nathalie long to relate her experiences in the bathroom, and then she remarked: “I wonder if Mrs. Van Vorst knew he was a girl. It’s awfully funny. Oh, I’ll read her letter again.”
The next moment, with the letter opened before her, she was slowly reading aloud:
“Dear Nathalie:
“I am sending you four boys instead of three. The fourth lad is a one-armed Belgian refugee, and his story is so pitiful I am sure, when you come to learn it, you will be glad I sent him to you. A Buffalo lady sent word to the Belgian Relief Committee that she would take one of a number of refugees recently arrived from France. But when she found that the poor lad had been mutilated by the Germans, her heart weakened. She claimed that she could not stand unpleasant things—what about the sufferings of the boy?—and returned him to the committee.
“A member of the committee, hearing that I was looking for some boys, and being greatly distressed over the cruelty of the case, begged me to send him to you, if only for a little while, so as to give them a chance to place him later. I, of course, will be responsible for any expense he will be to you. I am sorry, but I had no opportunity to clothe him. He seems a strange, docile child. I think he is still living in the horrors of hell, from those terrible eyes of his. Oh, it is heart-breaking, but I know that you love children, dear, and I am sure that you are just the one to bring something of the child in him back to his face again.