Big Brother | Page 3

she could never forget him.
He followed her with big, wistful eyes as she passed out, but smiled
happily when she turned at the door to look back and kiss her hand to
him.
At the next station, where they stopped for a few minutes, he watched
for her anxiously. Just as the train began to pull out he caught a glimpse
of her. There was a flutter of a white handkerchief and a bundle came
flying in through the window.
He looked out quickly, just in time to see her stepping into a carriage.
Then a long line of freight cars obstructed the view. By the time they
had passed them they were beyond even the straggling outskirts of the
village, with wide cornfields stretching in every direction, and it was of
no use to look for her any longer.
Mrs. Estel lost no time in making the young English girl's acquaintance.
She was scarcely settled in her seat before she found an opportunity.
Her umbrella slipped from the rack, and the girl sprang forward to
replace it.
"You have had a tiresome journey," Mrs. Estel remarked pleasantly
after thanking her.
"Yes, indeed, ma'am!" answered the girl, glad of some one to talk to
instead of the children, whose remarks were strictly of an interrogative
nature. It was an easy matter to draw her into conversation, and in a

short time Mrs. Estel was listening to little scraps of history that made
her eyes dim and her heart ache.
[Illustration]
"Do you mind telling me your name?" she asked at length.
"Ellen, ma'am."
"But the other," continued Mrs. Estel.
"We're not to tell, ma'am." Then seeing the look of inquiry on her face,
explained, "Sometimes strangers make trouble, hasking the little ones
hall sorts hof questions; so we've been told not to say where we're
going, nor hany think helse."
"I understand," answered Mrs. Estel quickly. "I ask only because I am
so much interested. I have a little girl at home that I have been away
from for a week, but she has a father and a grandmother and a nurse to
take care of her while I am gone. It makes me feel so sorry for these
poor little things turned out in the world alone."
"Bless you, ma'am!" exclaimed Ellen cheerfully. "The 'omes they're
going to be a sight better than the 'omes they've left behind. Naow
there's 'Enery; 'is mother died hin a drunken fit. 'E never knew nothink
hall 'is life but beating and starving, till the Haid Society took 'im hin
'and.
"Then there's Sally. Why, Sally's living 'igh naow--hoff the fat hof the
land, has you might say. Heverybody knows 'ow 'er hold huncle treated
'er!"
Mrs. Estel smiled as she glanced at Sally, to whom the faucet of the
water-cooler seemed a never-failing source of amusement. Ellen had
put a stop to her drinking, which she had been doing at intervals all the
morning, solely for the pleasure of seeing the water stream out when
she turned the stop-cock. Now she had taken a tidy spell. Holding her
bit of a handkerchief under the faucet long enough to get it dripping

wet, she scrubbed herself with the ice-water, until her cheeks shone like
rosy winter apples.
Then she smoothed the wet, elfish-looking hair out of her black eyes,
and proceeded to scrub such of the smaller children as could not escape
from her relentless grasp. Some submitted dumbly, and others
struggled under her vigorous application of the icy rag, but all she
attacked came out clean and shining.
Her dress was wringing wet in front, and the water was standing in
puddles around her feet, when the man who had them in charge came
through the car again. He whisked her impatiently into a seat, setting
her down hard. She made a saucy face behind his back, and began to
sing at the top of her voice.
One little tot had fallen and bumped its head as the train gave a sudden
lurch. It was crying pitifully, but in a subdued sort of whimper, as if it
felt that crying was of no use when nobody listened and nobody cared.
He picked it up, made a clumsy effort to comfort it, and, not knowing
what else to do, sat down beside it. Then for the first time he noticed
Mrs. Estel.
She had taken a pair of scissors from her travelling-bag, and had cut
several newspapers up into soldiers and dolls and all kinds of animals
for the crowd that clamored around her.
They were such restless little bodies, imprisoned so long on this tedious
journey, that anything with a suggestion of novelty was welcome.
When she had supplied them with a whole regiment of soldiers and
enough animals to equip a menagerie,