"Oh-h!" whispered the three voices in awed chorus.
"Didn't she have anything to eat in her own house?" ventured Allee.
"Nothing but dry bread and greasy soup all the five years she has laid there—"
"Five years!" repeated Peace in horrified accents. "Without any sunshine and green grass and flowers! O, I sh'd think she'd have died before this! Didn't she ever go to school and play with other children?"
"Before she fell from the fire-escape—"
"Was she hurt in a fire?" interrupted Cherry with interest.
"No, there was no fire, but the fire-escape was her only playground, for her mother would not let her run the streets with the other ragamuffins of the tenements; and one day she fell and crushed her hip. But before that, she had attended a free kindergarten around the corner and learned her alphabet. Her mother has a little education, and she has managed to find time to teach Sadie how to read, but that is all the child knows of school."
"O," sighed Peace, with a sudden yearning for the rambling old school-house, the high-ceilinged rooms, her low seat by the window, and even stern Miss Phelps, "what a lot she has missed! Here I'm feeling bad 'cause school will be out 'fore I am up again, if I have to stay in bed two months longer, and I'll be way behind my classes. But Sadie has never had a chance to go to school at all."
"Yes, dearie, you see how much you have to be thankful for, even if it is two months before you can get out of doors again by yourself. Until now, Sadie never knew what flowers looked like growing in the ground. I sent her a pot of your hyacinths when the Aid made their monthly visit to the Hospital, and Mrs. Cheever was just telling me that the child could not believe they were really alive. It is so sad to find one cheated out of so much in life."
"Isn't there something else I can send her of mine?" Peace anxiously inquired. "I've got so much and she hasn't anything. These puzzles are so stale I don't want to see 'em again and those books—"