World War, 1914-1918 -- United States -- Juvenile fiction; Young women -- Societies and clubs -- Juvenile fiction
“The Italian lad was found wandering in the streets on the East
Side, making an effort to support himself by playing on his
violin, as his aged grandfather,—he seems to have been an
orphan,—who was a hurdy-gurdy man, had just died. The two
brothers were found living in a cellar, where Danny, the older
one, had been trying to support his brother, after the death of
the aged woman who had had charge of them. He sold papers, but,
when sick and unable to do so, was found half-starved in the
cellar. It is hoped that the bracing breezes of the mountain
air, with good healthy food, will make new children of these
boys.
“Dear Nathalie, if you could only realize the bigness of the
work you have undertaken in taking these slum children into a
wonder-land of healthy living, the beauties and wonders of which
will mean to them a new and glorified world. God bless you,
dear, is all I can say and pray.
“Your friend,
“Elizabeth Van Vorst.”
“No, this letter proves that Mrs. Van Vorst did not know that the child
was a girl,” said Nathalie, as she tucked the letter in her shirt-waist.
“But, mother, what _shall_ I do about it?” she continued, in such a
dejected voice that her mother burst out laughing.
“Don’t do anything about it, daughter,” Mrs. Page replied, still
laughing. “A girl is as good as a boy any day, and we will just set to
work, this very minute, and rig up some clothes from some of your old
things, for the child to wear.”
“Oh, I think she will make a lovely girl, with those great brown eyes of
hers,” cried Janet, enthusiastically. “And she has dimples, too. I know
we can make the sweetest thing of her, and—”
But Nathalie didn’t wait to hear the rest. She was so overjoyed to think
it had turned out all right, that she was in a hurry to reassure Danny,
whom she realized had been greatly worried over the circumstance. But
how did they come to dress the child as a boy? she queried as she
hurried into the room, where the now little girl had fallen fast asleep
in Nathalie’s bed, while her brother watched beside her with a white,
frightened face.
“Tell me, Danny,” inquired Nathalie gently, as she laid her hand on the
boy’s head, “how did you come to make a boy of your sister?”
A quick sob broke from the lad. And then, with a stiffening of his chin,
as if with the resolution that he would not give way, while furtively
wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, he told how, when Granny
Maguire died, and his little sister’s clothes, after a time, wore out,
he had been compelled to clothe her in his cast-off rags, because he had
no others, and he didn’t know where to get them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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