“His story is one of many. His village was overrun by the German soldiery, and the brave little lad, while trying to defend his mother from the atrocity of a German officer, was bayoneted, and finally lost his arm. His mother was carried away into Germany, but the boy believes her dead. I will not tell you the rest of the story, for some day he may want to unburden his child mind and tell you his pitiful take himself. His little yellow dog has been his comrade through all of his weary wanderings, the only thing that remains to him of his once happy home, and no one had the heart to take it from him.
“The Italian lad was found wandering in the streets on the East Side, making an effort to support himself by playing on his violin, as his aged grandfather,—he seems to have been an orphan,—who was a hurdy-gurdy man, had just died. The two brothers were found living in a cellar, where Danny, the older one, had been trying to support his brother, after the death of the aged woman who had had charge of them. He sold papers, but, when sick and unable to do so, was found half-starved in the cellar. It is hoped that the bracing breezes of the mountain air, with good healthy food, will make new children of these boys.
“Dear Nathalie, if you could only realize the bigness of the work you have undertaken in taking these slum children into a wonder-land of healthy living, the beauties and wonders of which will mean to them a new and glorified world. God bless you, dear, is all I can say and pray.
“Your friend,
“Elizabeth Van Vorst.”
“No, this letter proves that Mrs. Van Vorst did not know that the child was a girl,” said Nathalie, as she tucked the letter in her shirt-waist. “But, mother, what shall I do about it?” she continued, in such a dejected voice that her mother burst out laughing.
“Don’t do anything about it, daughter,” Mrs. Page replied, still laughing. “A girl is as good as a boy any day, and we will just set to work, this very minute, and rig up some clothes from some of your old things, for the child to wear.”
“Oh, I think she will make a lovely girl, with those great brown eyes of hers,” cried Janet, enthusiastically. “And she has dimples, too. I know we can make the sweetest thing of her, and—”
But Nathalie didn’t wait to hear the rest. She was so overjoyed to think it had turned out all right, that she was in a hurry to reassure Danny, whom she realized had been greatly worried over the circumstance. But how did they come to dress the child as a boy? she queried as she hurried into the room, where the now little girl had fallen fast asleep in Nathalie’s bed, while her brother watched beside her with a white, frightened face.
“Tell me, Danny,” inquired Nathalie gently, as she laid her hand on the boy’s head, “how did you come to make a boy of your sister?”
A quick sob broke from the lad. And then, with a stiffening of his chin, as if with the resolution that he would not give way, while furtively wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, he told how, when Granny Maguire died, and his little sister’s clothes, after a time, wore out, he had been compelled to clothe her in his cast-off rags, because he had no others, and he didn’t know where to get them.