"She must be like Miss Peyton. She was my teacher at Chestnut School and I didn't like her a bit till the day school ended. She did get thawed out then, though, and I b'lieve she'll be nicer after this."
"Do you live near here?" asked Tony, thinking it was their turn to ask questions of this debonair little stranger, who evidently belonged to rich people, because her brown curls were tied back with a huge pink ribbon, a dainty white pinafore covered her pretty gingham dress, and her feet were shod in patent leather slippers.
"No, grandpa's house is three miles away, but I am staying at the Hill Street parsonage." Briefly she explained how it had all come about, and the story seemed like a fairy tale to the four eager listeners.
"Then you are an orphan, too," cried Tony triumphantly, when she had finished. "How do you know Lottie ain't your twin sister?"
"'Cause there never were any twins in our family, and if there had been, do you s'pose mother'd have let one loose like that, to get put in a Children's Home? I guess not!"
"Maybe she's a cousin, then."
"We haven't got any. Papa was the only child Grandpa Greenfield had, and mother's only brother died when he was little."
"But Lottie's just the yimage of you," insisted Tony, bent on discovering some tie of relationship between the two.
"I can't help that. I guess it's just a queerity, though I'd like to find out I had some sure-enough cousins which I didn't know anything about. Besides, Lottie is lots darker than me. Her hair is black and so are her eyes. Least I guess they are what you'd call black. Mine are only brown."
"You're the same size. Ain't they, Ethel?" asked the older lad.