ant?"

"Maybe, if you dream hard enough, Nonie," Nancy answered, soberly.

"'Course I know _some_ of the things I pretend can't come true but
maybe some will. Miss Denny told me they might. Only she said I'd
have to make 'em. She's my teacher. I love her. I guess you're most
as nice as she is. She gives me books and tells me when I say bad
grammar. She says we must just think beautiful things and then put
them into the right words--but it's hard! I forget awful easy. She
don't--I mean, she does _not_--think I'm queer. Liz calls me 'loony!'"

"Oh, _no_--Nonie," protested Nancy, "Liz just can't understand."

"But _you_ do, don't you? Miss Denny did, too." Nonie was silent for
a moment. "After I've learned a lot more I want to go out in the world
with Davy and make a fortune. I don't know just how--but I want to do
grand things. There's some places, ain't there--aren't there--that's
so big folks wouldn't know we were Hopworths? Davy says he wants to go
to sea and Liz says he'll come to no good end like Pa, but mebbe I can
take him with me." She sighed. "It's awful long off 'til I grow up,
though, I'm only twelve."

Then Nonie added slowly, as though she was sharing a secret: "There's
one more thing I pretend. After I go to bed I shut my eyes tight and
pretend that a beautiful lady with hair all gold and eyes that twinkle
like stars and smile at you, comes and sits by my bed and takes hold of
my hand and pats it and then kisses me, sort of on my forehead, and
says: 'Good night, sweetness,' like that, in a voice that's soft like
music and not a bit of the holler-kind!" Nonie gave a little sigh of
rapture. "It's nice, you see, to have a make-believe mother like that!
I s'pose a real one wouldn't have time. Anyways, Liz says she'd like
to _see_ a real mother do more for young 'uns than she does!"

Nancy blinked a sudden rush of tears from her eyes. She felt that she
had seen bared the very soul of a child--a soul hungry for kindness and
for love. She reached out and took one of the small hands in her own.

"Nonie--let's you and I play lots together. I can give you books, too.
We'll read them together. You can come to Happy House often in the
daytime."

Nonie shook her head doubtfully.

"Liz won't let me. She says there ain't--there isn't--no use my going
off and leaving my work. She says school's bad enough!"

"Does Liz--punish--you much?"

"She chases Davy and me with the broom sometime