and so old and so frumpy--she'd been sewing all day for my beastly
step-aunt and I'd been trying all day to get the courage to--to--" the
girl's tears were streaming now and she didn't bother to wipe them
away, she seemed utterly unashamed of them, "to get rid of myself. And
just the minute I got the cork out of the bottle that little old angel
opened the door. She was so darned different from anybody I'd ever
seen in all my life and she talked so differently from anybody I'd
ever listened to, I--well, I sort of forgot wanting to die because I
was curious to find out where on earth she'd come from--or where on
earth she was going to! She had a funny little dog under her arm; she
gave it to me to hold. And the next thing I knew she was inviting me
to go home with her. She thought I might like this room, she said. She
told me it was filled 'with-an-abundance-of-weeds-we-have-not-any-
names-for--' Wasn't that an absolute corker? That was her way of
describing the Italian family with too many brats that were living
here. She'd got that apology for 'em out of her great-great-grandma's
garden book! Can you beat it? She talks about everybody as if they
belonged in a garden. She called me--" the girl's lips quivered,--"a
rosebush that had been pruned too much--roots cramped--she said--
anyway she picked me up to transplant me! Marched me into the
'orrible, messy, noisy, smelly hutch that this house used to be, up
all those eighty 'leven stairs, and she kept her chin in the air as
though it was a royal palace she was taking me into! She just kept
saying,

"'Come! You'll love, love, love it! And you're going to be proud,
proud, proud to live here--'

"I was proud, all right," the girl's voice choked. "I wouldn't have
missed living here those next two months, not for all the marble that