Page:Pollyanna Grows Up.djvu/167

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A Waiting and a Winning
143


lonesome, them days 'specially, and we said it did us good to see homes with folks, and lamps on the center-tables, and children playin' games; but we both of us knew that really it only made us feel worse than ever, because we were so hopelessly out of it all. 'Twas even harder to see the automobiles, and the gay young folks in them, laughing and chatting. You see, we were young, and I suspect we wanted to laugh and chatter. We wanted a good time, too; and, by and by—my chum began to have it—this good time.

"Well, to make a long story short, we broke partnership one day, and she went her way, and I mine. I didn't like the company she was keepin', and I said so. She wouldn't give 'em up, so we quit. I didn't see her again for 'most two years, then I got a note from her, and I went. This was just last month. She was in one of them rescue homes. It was a lovely place; soft rugs, fine pictures, plants, flowers, and books, a piano, a beautiful room, and everything possible done for her. Rich women came in their automobiles and carriages to take her driving, and she was taken to concerts and matinees. She was learnin' stenography, and they were going to help her to a position just as soon as she could take it. Everybody was wonderfully good to her, she said, and showed they wanted to help her in every way. But she said something else, too. She said:

"'Sadie, if they'd taken one half the pains to show me they cared and wanted to help long ago when I was an honest, self-respectin', hard-workin' homesick girl—I wouldn't have been here for them to help