"Her sewing-class," replied Mrs. Forcythe, smiling.
"There they are!" cried Mary eagerly. "They're waiting for me. Do look at them, Bishop; it's those five little girls in a row behind the second pillar from the door. That big one is Norah, and the one in blue is Rachel, and the littlest is named Kathleen. Isn't she pretty? They're the sweetest little things, oh, I shall miss them so. I shan't ever have such good times again as I've had with them." Her voice faltered; a lump came in her throat. To hide it she slipped away, and went across the church to where the little ones sat.
"That's a dear child of yours," said the good Bishop, looking after her. "I guess she'll do wherever she goes."
And I think Mary will.
LADY BIRD.
"NOW, Pocahontas Maria, sit still and don't disturb the little ones. Imogene, that lesson must be learned before I come back, you know. Now, dear, that was very, very naughty. When Mamma tells you to do things you mustn't pout and poke Stella with your foot in that way. It isn't nice at all. Stella is younger than you, and you ought to set her samples, as Nursey says. Look at Ning Po Ganges, how good she is, and how she minds all I say, and yet she's the littlest child I've got."
If anybody had been walking in Madam Bird's old-fashioned garden that morning, and had heard these wise words coming from the other side of the rose thicket, he would certainly have supposed that some old dame with a school was hidden away there, or at the least an anxious Mamma with a family of unruly children. But if this somebody had gone into the thicket, bobbing his head to avoid the prickly, wreath-like branches, he would have found on the other side only one person, little Lota Bird, playing all alone with her dolls. "Lady Bird" Nursey called Lota, because when, six years before, Papa fetched her home from China, she wore a speckled frock of orange-red and black, very much the color of those other tiny frocks in which the real lady-birds fly about in summer-time. The speckled frock was outgrown long ago, but the name still clung to Lota, and every one called her by it except Grandmamma, who said "Charlotte," sighing as she spoke, and Papa, whose letters always began, "My darling little Lota." Papa had been away so long now that Lota would quite have forgotten him had it not been for these letters which came regularly every month. The paper on which they were written had an odd, pleasant smell. Nurse said it was the smell of sandal-wood. Sometimes there were things inside for Lota, bird's feathers of gay colors, Chinese puzzles of carved ivory, or small pictures painted on rice paper. Lota liked these things very much. It was like playing at a Papa rather than really having one, but she enjoyed the play; and when they told her that Papa was soon coming home to stay always, she was only half glad, and said: "Won't there be any more letters then? I shan't like that." Poor little girlie: we, who know how nice it is to have real Papas, can feel sorry for her; can't we?