d anything for herself. The camp will seem like paradise to her
if she can only get in touch with things--I'm sure it will."

"I'll do my best for her," Laura promised.

"I know you will. And you'll meet her when she comes, to-morrow?"

"Of course," Laura returned.

There was no time to spare when they reached the station, but Miss
Grandis' last word was of Elizabeth and her great need.

Laura was at the station early the next day, and would have recognised
the Poor Thing even if she had not been the only girl leaving the train
at that place. Elizabeth was seventeen, but she might have been taken
for fourteen until one looked into her eyes--they seemed to mirror the
pain and privation of half a century. Laura's heart went out to her in a
wave of pitying tenderness, but the girl drew back as if frightened by
the warm friendliness of her greeting.

All the way back to camp she sat silent, answering a direct question
with a nod or shake of the head, but never speaking; and when, at the
camp, a crowd of girls came to meet the newcomer, she looked wildly
around as if for refuge from all these strangers. Seeing this, Laura,
with a whispered word, sent the girls away, and introduced Elizabeth
only to Mrs. Royall and Anne Wentworth.

"Another scared rabbit?" giggled Louise Johnson.

"Don't call her that, Louise," said Bessie Carroll. "I'm awfully sorry
for the poor thing."

Laura, overhearing the low-spoken words, said to herself, "There it
is--Poor Thing. That name is bound to cling to her, it fits so exactly."

It did fit exactly, and within two days Elizabeth was the Poor Thing to
every girl in the camp. Laura kept the child with her most of the first
day; she was quiet and still as a ghost, did as she was told, and
watched all that went on, but she spoke to no one and never asked a
question. At night she was given a cot next to Olga's. When Laura showed
her her place at bedtime, she pointed to the adjoining tent.

"I sleep right there, Elizabeth," she said, "and if you want anything in
the night, just speak, and I shall hear you. But I hope you will sleep
so soundly that you won't know anything till morning. It's lovely
sleeping out of doors like this!"

Elizabeth said nothing, but she shivered as she cast a fearful glance
into the shadowy spaces beyond the tents, and Laura hastened to add,
"You needn't be a bit afraid. Nothing but birds and squirrels ever come
around here."

Elizabeth went early to bed, and