The lame girl laid a thin, waxen hand on the curly head bobbing so enthusiastically at her side, and murmured gently, "How do you think up so many beautiful things to do for other people?"
"I don't," Peace frankly replied. "I guess they just think themselves. You see, I know what it is to be poor and not have nice things like other folks, and now that grandpa's taken us home to live with him in a great, big house where there's always plenty and enough to spare, seems like it was just the proper thing to give some of it away to make the less forchinit a little happier. It takes such a little to make folks smile!"
"Indeed it does, little philosopher. Your name should have been Lady Bountiful. Giuseppe may go with you to the Home as often as he wishes with his violin, and help you make them happy."
"Oh, you're such a darling!" cried Peace in ecstasy, hugging the hand between her own pink palms. "I wish you could go, too. Tony says they have song services every Sunday afternoon, and they are great! I'm to go next Sunday and hear them, but I wish you could, too."
"You are very generous," murmured the lame girl a trifle huskily. Then—perhaps it was because Peace's enthusiasm was contagious, perhaps it was due to a growing desire in her own heart for the world from which she had shut herself so long ago—the older girl suddenly electrified her companion by adding, "I should like to hear them myself. Do you think the matron would allow them to visit me in my garden, seeing that I can't go to the Home as other folks do?"
"Oh, do you mean that?"
"Every word!"
"Miss Chase couldn't say no to anything so beautiful, and I don't think the Lady Boards would object, either; but I'll find out. Saint John can tell me, I'm sure. Oh, I never dreamed of anything so lovely! I wouldn't have dared dream it!" She hugged herself in rapture, and her eyes beamed like stars. How grand it was to have friends like the Lilac Lady!
So it came about that a few days later fifty shining-faced, bright-eyed boys and girls from the Home marched proudly up Hill Street and in through the great iron gates to the Enchanted Garden, where the lame girl, with Aunt Pen and the parsonage household to assist her, waited to greet them.
That was a gala day, talked about for weeks afterward, dreamed of in the silent watches of the night, and recorded in memory's treasure book to be lived over again and again in later years,—one of those heart's delights, the fragrance of which never dies.