of
silvery hair that had strayed out from under the coarse white night-cap.
Then she passed quickly on to her other duties, leaving Joyce to begin
the conversation as best she could. The old woman looked at her sharply
with piercing dark eyes, which must have been beautiful in their youth.
The intense gaze embarrassed Joyce, and to break the silence she
hurriedly stammered out the first thing that came to her mind.

"Are you ill, to-day?"

The simple question had a startling effect on the old woman. She raised
herself on one elbow, and reached out for Joyce's hand, drawing her
eagerly nearer. "Ah," she cried, "you speak the language that my husband
taught me to love, and the tongue my little children lisped; but they
are all dead now, and I've come back to my native land to find no home
but the one that charity provides."

Her words ended in a wail, and she sank back on her pillow. "And this is
my birthday," she went on. "Seventy-three years old, and a pauper, cast
out to the care of strangers."

The tears ran down her wrinkled cheeks, and her mouth trembled
pitifully. Joyce was distressed; she looked around for Sister Denisa,
but saw that they were alone, they two, in the great bare dormitory,
with its long rows of narrow white cots. The child felt utterly helpless
to speak a word of comfort, although she was so sorry for the poor
lonely old creature that she began to cry softly to herself. She leaned
over, and taking one of the thin, blue-veined hands in hers, patted it
tenderly with her plump little fingers.

"I ought not to complain," said the trembling voice, still broken by
sobs. "We have food and shelter and sunshine and the sisters. Ah, that
little Sister Denisa, she is indeed a smile of God to us all. But at
seventy-three one wants more than a cup of coffee and a clean
handkerchief. One wants something besides a bed and being just Number
Thirty-one among two hundred other paupers."

"I am _so_ sorry!" exclaimed Joyce, with such heartfelt earnestness that
the sobbing woman felt the warmth of her sympathy, and looked up with a
brighter face.

"Talk to me," she exclaimed. "It has been so long since I have heard
your language."

While she obeyed Joyce kept thinking of her Grandmother Ware. She could
see her outdoors among her flowers, the dahlias and touch-me-nots, the
four-o'clocks and the cinnamon roses, taking such pride and pleasure in
her sweet posy beds. She could see her beside the little table on