Then Nonie added slowly, as though she was sharing a secret: "There's one more thing I pretend. After I go to bed I shut my eyes tight and pretend that a beautiful lady with hair all gold and eyes that twinkle like stars and smile at you, comes and sits by my bed and takes hold of my hand and pats it and then kisses me, sort of on my forehead, and says: 'Good night, sweetness,' like that, in a voice that's soft like music and not a bit of the holler-kind!" Nonie gave a little sigh of rapture. "It's nice, you see, to have a make-believe mother like that! I s'pose a real one wouldn't have time. Anyways, Liz says she'd like to _see_ a real mother do more for young 'uns than she does!" Nancy blinked a sudden rush of tears from her eyes. She felt that she had seen bared the very soul of a child--a soul hungry for kindness and for love. She reached out and took one of the small hands in her own. "Nonie--let's you and I play lots together. I can give you books, too. We'll read them together. You can come to Happy House often in the daytime." Nonie shook her head doubtfully. "Liz won't let me. She says there ain't--there isn't--no use my going off and leaving my work. She says school's bad enough!" "Does Liz--punish--you much?" "She chases Davy and me with the broom sometimes. And she scolds, too, but we don't mind, 'cause she's scolding all the time. I wish she would whip us--or lock us up--or--or send us to bed! It'd be like other kids, then." The strangeness of a child longing for punishments that would make her life seem like other childrens' shocked Nancy! She looked at the thin body--was poverty starving the physical being while neglect starved the spirit? "I'll talk to Liz myself. We'll see what I can coax her to do," Nancy declared resolutely. "We'll be chums, Nonie." "Oh, then I won't have to play 'bout Rosemary! So, you _are_ as nice as Miss Denny. You don't know her, do you? But she'll come back in the fall and sometime, I guess, she'll be Mr. Peter's dearest." "What _do_ you mean, Nonie," demanded Nancy. "Well, Mr. Peter's the _nicest_ man I know 'cause he's awful--nice to Davy and me, and Miss Denny's the nicest _lady_ and so she'll be his dearest! He don't--he doesn't--know her yet but he will in the fall and so will you." "I may not," Nancy answered, rather coldly, "so your Miss Denny may have your Mr. Peter all to herself. And now something tells me it's time for fairies to be in bed! If you'll hand me my slippers I'll dance with you to the gate--only we must be very, very still or we'll waken B'lindy!" From the gate of Happy House Nancy watched the child's figure disappear in the shadows of the road. In a very little while she would be crawling into her deserted bed, pulling the clothes up over her head and pretending that a mother's hand was caressing her to sleep and a voice that never "hollered" was whispering "goodnight."