“You’re bashful, Sal-lee,” Clara told her shrewdly. “I’m not bashful—much, except when visitors come and we have to show off our company manners. I hate visitors! They whisper about us, call us ‘poor little things,’ and think they’re better’n us.” The floor of the big room had been completely scrubbed, and was giving out a moist odor of yellow soap when Miss Pond, who worked in the office on the first floor of the big main building, arrived leading a reluctant little girl by the hand. To the four orphans in faded blue and white gingham the newcomer looked unbelievably splendid, more like the “princess” that Betsy had been impersonating than like a mortal child. Her golden hair hung in precisely arranged curls to her shoulders. Her dress was of pink crepe de chine, trimmed with many yards of cream-colored lace. There were pink silk socks and little white kid slippers. And her pretty face, though it was streaked with tears, had been artfully coated with white powder and tinted, on cheeks and lips, with carmine rouge. “This is Eloise Durant, girls,” said Miss Pond, who was incurably sentimental and kind to orphans. “She’s feeling a little homesick now and I know you will all try to make her happy. You’ll take charge of her, won’t you, Sally dear?” “Yes, Miss Pond,” Sally answered automatically, but her arms were already yearning to gather the little bundle of elegance and tears and homesickness. “And Sally,” Miss Pond said nervously, lowering her voice in the false hope that the weeping child might not hear her, “Mrs. Stone says her hair must be washed and then braided, like the other children’s. Eloise tells us it isn’t naturally curly, that her mother did it up on kid curlers every night. Her aunt’s been doing it for her since her mother—died.” “I don’t want to be an orphan,” the newcomer protested passionately, a white-slippered foot flying out suddenly and kicking Miss Pond on the shin. It was then that Sally took charge. She knelt, regardless of frantic, kicking little feet, and put her arms about Eloise Durant. She began to whisper to the terror-stricken child, and Miss Pond scurried away, her kind eyes brimming with tears, her kind heart swelling with impractical plans for finding luxurious homes and incredibly kind foster parents for all the orphans in the asylum—but especially for those with golden curly hair and blue eyes. For Miss Pond was a born “adopter,” with all the typical adopter’s prejudices and preferences.