When scarcely two minutes after the noon dinner bell had clanged deafeningly, hundreds of little girls and big girls in faded blue and white gingham came tumbling from every direction, to halt and form a decorous procession just outside the dining hall doors, Sally and her new little charge were among them. But only the sharp eyes of the other orphans could have detected that the child who clung forlornly to Sally’s hand was a newcomer. The golden curls had disappeared, and in their place were two short yellow braids, the ends tied with bits of old shoe-string. The small face, scrubbed clean of its powder and rouge, was as pale as Sally’s. And instead of lace-trimmed pink crepe de chine, silk socks and white kid slippers, Eloise was clad, like every other orphan, in a skimpy gingham frock, coarse black stockings and heavy black shoes. And when the marching procession of orphans had distributed itself before long, backless benches, drawn up to long, narrow pine tables covered with torn, much-scrubbed white oilcloth, Eloise, coached in that ritual as well as in many others sacred in the institution, piped up with all the others, her voice as monotonous as theirs: “Our heavenly Father, we thank Thee for this food and for all the other blessings Thou giveth us.” Sally Ford, keeping a watchful, pitying eye on her new charge, who was only nibbling at the unappetizing food, found herself looking upon the familiar scene with the eyes of the frightened little new orphan. It was a game that Sally Ford often played—imagining herself someone else, seeing familiar things through eyes which had never beheld them before. Because Eloise was a “new girl,” Sally was permitted to keep her at her side after the noon dinner. It was Sally who showed her all the buildings of the big orphanage, pointed out the boys’ dormitories, separated from the girls’ quarters by the big kitchen garden; showed her the bare schoolrooms, in which Sally herself had just completed the third year of high school. It was Sally who pridefully showed her the meagerly equipped gymnasium, the gift of a miraculously philanthropic session of the state legislature; it was Sally who conducted her through the many rooms devoted to hand crafts suited to girls—showing off a bit as she expertly manipulated a hand loom. Eloise’s hot little hand clung tightly to Sally’s on the long trip of inspection of her new “home.” But her cry, hopeless and monotonous now, even taking on a little of the institutional whine, was still the same heartbroken protest she had uttered upon her arrival in the dormitory: “I don’t want to be an orphan! I don’t want to be an orphan, Sal-lee!” “It ain’t—I mean, isn’t—so bad,” Sally comforted her. “Sometimes we have lots of fun. And Christmas is awf’ly nice. Every girl gets an orange and a little sack of candy and a present. And we have turkey for dinner, and ice cream.”