The brown eyes winked away the tears and blazed scornfully up at the face above her. "Keep it yourself! You need it!" she growled savagely, pushing the extended hand away from her so fiercely that the candy was scattered all about the floor, and without a backward glance, she flounced out of the store.
"Well, I vum!" exclaimed the astonished clerk. "Next time I'll let her bawl." Stooping over to collect the hapless chocolate drops before they should be tramped upon, he began to whistle, and the notes followed Peace out on the street—just a bar of her sunshine song, but the woe-begone face brightened a bit, although the girl said to herself, "Oh, dear, seems 'sif that song chases me wherever I go. I get it sung or whistled or spoke at me a dozen times a day. And it's hard work always to remember it, 'specially when folks go off and forget all about you when you've just been counting the days till 'twas time to go home and see Allee and grandpa after being away so long. S'posing I should die 'fore they get back, I wonder how they'll feel. Why, Peace Greenfield, you hateful little tike! Ain't you ashamed of yourself? Yes, I am. Of course they didn't run away a-purpose. Grandpa didn't know he had to go until an hour 'fore the train went, and there wasn't time to send for me and get my clo'es ready to go, too. It was awful nice of him to think of taking the girls and grandma to the Pine Woods to get real well and rested while he did up his business in Dolliver. They'll come back lots better than they'd be if they had to stay here through all this hot.
"Think of being shut up three months in the house so's they couldn't plant gardens or go flower-hunting, or have picnics, or even go to school! I've been doing all those things while they've been sick. I'm truly 'shamed of myself to be so cross about their going off. Elizabeth and Saint John are just the dearest people to me, and the Lilac Lady really cried tears in her eyes when she thought I was going to leave here Monday. She'll be glad to know that I am to stay two or three weeks longer. And it will be such fun to get letters from the girls in the woods all the while they are gone. After all, I b'lieve I'll have a better time here anyway."
The cloud had passed over without the threatened storm, and the round face, though still a little sober, looked quite contented again. But during this silent soliloquy, the young philosopher had been wandering aimlessly through the streets, without any thought of the direction she was taking, and was suddenly roused from her revery by the mingled shouts and laughter of a throng of boys and girls playing noisily in a great yard fenced in by tall iron pickets.
"Why, school is closed for the summer!" murmured Peace to herself, pressing her face against the iron bars in order that she might watch the lively games on the other side of the palings. "Elizabeth says all the Martindale schools close at the same time. What can these children be doing here then? P'raps this is where the old lady who lived in a shoe had to move to when the shoe got too small for her fambly. Do you s'pose it is?"
"Yup, I guess that's how it happened," answered a voice close beside her, and she jumped almost out of her shoes in her surprise, for unconsciously she had spoken her thoughts aloud, and a merry-faced urchin, sprawled in the shade of a low-limbed box-elder, had answered her. His peal of delight at having startled her so brought another lad and two girls to see the cause of his glee, and Peace was shocked to behold in the smaller of the girls her own double, only the stranger child was dressed in a long blue apron, which made her look much older than she really was. As the children stood staring at each other through the close-set pickets, the boy in the grass discovered the likeness of the two faces, and with a startled whoop sat up to ask excitedly of Peace, "Did you ever have a twin?"
"No."
"Oh, dear, I was sure you must have! You're just the yimage of Lottie. She's a norphan, and the folks that brought her here didn't even know what her real name was or anything about her, and we've always 'magined that some day her truly people would come and find her and she'd have a mother of her own."
"Is this a—a school?" asked Peace. She wanted to say orphan asylum, but was afraid it would be impolite, and she did not wish to offend any of these friendly appearing children.
"It's the Children's Home."