an unruly young vine to run in
the way it should go over a little arbour. Charlotte instantly named
her the Tall Lady with the Black Eyes. She was not nearly so young or
so pretty as the Lady with the Blue Eyes, but she looked very kind and
jolly.

I'd like her for an aunt, reflected Charlotte. Not for a mother--oh,
no, not for a mother, but for an aunt. I know she'd make a splendid
aunt. And, oh, just look at her cat!

Charlotte looked at the cat with all her might and main. She loved
cats, but cats were not allowed in an orphan asylum, although
Charlotte sometimes wondered if there were no orphan kittens in the
world which would be appropriate for such an institution.

The Tall Lady's cat was so big and furry, with a splendid tail and
elegant stripes. A Very Handsome Cat, Charlotte called him mentally,
seeing the capitals as plainly as if they had been printed out.
Charlotte's fingers tingled to stroke his glossy coat, but she folded
them sternly together.

"You know you can't," she said to herself reproachfully, "so what is
the use of wanting to, Charlotte Turner? You ought to be thankful just
to see the garden and the Very Handsome Cat."

Charlotte watched the Tall Lady and the Cat until they went away into
a fine, big house further up the garden, then she sighed and went back
through the cherry trees to the asylum playground, where the other
orphans were playing games. But, somehow, games had lost their flavour
compared with those fascinating gaps.

It did not take Charlotte long to discover that the Pretty Lady always
walked past the northwest gap about one o'clock every day and never at
any other time--at least at no other time when Charlotte was free to
watch her; and that the Tall Lady was almost always in her garden at
five in the afternoon, accompanied by the Very Handsome Cat, pruning
and trimming some of her flowers. Charlotte never missed being at the
gaps at the proper times, if she could possibly manage it, and her
heart was full of dreams about her two Ladies. But the other orphans
thought all the fun had gone out of her, and the matron noticed her
absent-mindedness and dosed her with sulphur and molasses for it.
Charlotte took the dose meekly, as she took everything else. It was
all part and parcel with being an orphan in an asylum.

"But if the Pretty Lady with the Blue Eyes was my mother, she wouldn't
make me swallow such dreadful stuff," sighed Charlotte. "I don't
believe even the Tall Lady