"That's nice for you, Mattie, but I shan't be here. Miss Stewart's coming back to-morrow," replied Elsie.
The child's bright, thin little face clouded.
"Oh, dear, oh, dear, these changes are most too much for me, I declare!" she cried. "I mean changes-_back_ is. The change that brought you here, Miss Moss, was just sweet. Only I wish it had turned into a _stay_."
Elsie drew the little thing close to her. At the moment she herself almost wished it had been a _stay_.
"I wonder if that's my _hard_," prattled the child. "Mother says everybody, even rich people, have hard things to bear. Do you bleeve so, Miss Moss?"
"Why, Mattie, I hardly know," she faltered. "Ye-es, I suppose every one does, really."
Elsie couldn't answer. On a sudden that first day she and Elsie Moss had been together came back to her. She recalled Elsie's fresh grief for the death of her mother and her own sense of remissness, and the class motto that signified through hardships to the stars. Since she had been at Enderby, things had been disagreeable enough almost to make up for her former immunity. And yet, she hadn't been here ten days, and she didn't really have to endure it. Furthermore, she was to escape from it very shortly.
"No, Mattie, I don't believe I have had so much that is hard as most people have," she owned.
"You are like the princess, you see," murmured the child. "But I s'pose you feel awfully sorry about your auntie being so poorly? When mother was sick once I felt as bad _here_ as if I had the stomachache hard."
Elsie evaded the issue by hoping politely that the little girl's mother was quite well now.
"Oh, yes, Miss Moss, and does four peopleses' washings besides our own," Mattie declared. "Father works steady most of the time, but there's five of us, counting the baby, and--sometimes he gets drunk. Not so very often, he doesn't, but nobody can ever tell when he will and when he won't, so mother has to help out. Well, I must go now. When will I see you?"
Elsie didn't know what to say. Miss Stewart's return had been delayed from day to day and she had postponed making her decision as to her course until that matter was settled. Only to-day had she learned that the librarian would resume her work to-morrow, Saturday, and she expected to give up her evening to forming her own plans. Until this moment, she hadn't thought of Mattie as a complication. It didn't seem possible that one could become so attached to a child of ten years in--it wasn't yet ten days--that one not only hated to leave her, but even felt remiss, almost conscience-stricken, in so doing.