“Miss them! You mean you’d rather be at the Orphanage than here with me?”
“It isn’t the nice things—it isn’t you—it’s—it’s——”
“Yes, yes! What is it?”
“I guess it’s just the orphans—’specially the babies. I miss havin’ to do things for ’em. For they needed an awful lot done for ’em, and—I was happy because it was me that could do it.”
“But they have some one else to look after them now. They’re no worse off because you’ve gone.”
“No’m. Perhaps not. I wasn’t ‘specially thinking of their side of it. I was thinking of mine. They liked to have things done for ’em. They told me so. Miss Howland got awful cross sometimes. And I felt happy because I was ’preciated. That’s an awful nice word, ’preciated, isn’t it? I so want folks to ’preciate me, Mrs. Thed—mother dear. I guess everybody does, don’t they?—want to be ’preciated?”
Every one wants to be appreciated? Dear God in heaven!
“Child, what does put such mature thoughts into your little head?”
“If you’d wondered and wondered who you were, and never found out, maybe you’d know how sad you could feel, thinking it was because nobody wanted you and you wasn’t ’preciated.”
“You poor, maternal, romantic little lamb! You talk like a woman grown, already.”