John drew out a five-pound note. “Can you buy her any little things with this? When you have spent it, if you will tell me, I 'll send you another.”
“It's against our rules,” said the Sister, eying the money. “If you like to give it as a subscription to the general funds, I will accept it.”
“Are you badly off?” asked John.
“We are very slenderly endowed.”
John pushed the note across the small table near which they were sitting.
“In return,” said he, “I hope you will allow me to send in some jellies and fruits, or appliances, or whatever may be of pleasure or comfort to the child.”
“Whatever you send her that is practical shall be applied to her use,” said the Sister superintendent.
She was cold, unemotional; no smile, no ghost even of departed smiles, seemed ever to visit the tired, gray eyes or the corners of the rigid mouth; coif and face and thin hands were spotless. She did not even thank him for his forced gift to the orphanage.
“I should like to know,” said John, regarding her beneath frowning brows, “whether any one here loves the unhappy little wretch.”
“These children,” replied the Sister superintendent, “have naturally a hard battle to fight when they go from here into the world. They come mostly from vicious classes. Their training is uniformly kind, but it has to be austere.”