d when Mrs.
Robinsky had brought them up and put them under the cot, with the
injunction that they were not to be opened until the morning, and for
the first time their familiarity was dawning on her. Could it
be--could _she_ be the little friend he had said was rich? She wasn't
rich. He didn't mean money-rich, but she wasn't any kind of rich; and
she had been so piggy.

Hot color swept over her face, and her hands twitched. She had told
him again and again she was getting too much, but he had insisted on
her buying more, and made her tell him what little girls liked, until
she would tell nothing more. And they had all been for her. For her,
Carmencita Bell, who had never heard of him three days before.

In the shock of revelation, the amazement of discovery, the little
figure at the table stood rigid and upright, then it relaxed and with
a stifled sob Carmencita crossed the room and, by the side of her cot,
twisted herself into a little knot and buried her face in her arms and
her arms in the covering.

"I didn't believe! I didn't believe!"

Over and over the words came tremblingly. "I prayed and prayed, but I
didn't believe! He let it happen, and I didn't believe!"

For some moments there were queer movements of twitching hands and
twisting feet by the side of the cot, but after a while a
tear-stained, awed, and shy-illumined face looked up from the arms in
which it had been hidden and ten slender fingers intertwined around
the knees of a hunched-up little body, which on the floor drew itself
closer to the fire.

It was a wonderful world, this world in which she lived. Carmencita's
eyes were looking toward the window, through which she could see the
shining stars. Wonderful things happened in it, and quite beyond
explaining were these things, and there was no use trying to
understand. Two days ago she was just a little girl who lived in a
place she hated and was too young to go to work, and who had a blind
father and no rich friends or relations, and there was nothing nice
that could happen just so.

"But things don't happen just so. They happen--don't anybody know how,
I guess." Carmencita nodded at the stars. "I've prayed a good many
times before and nothing happened, and I don't know why all this
beautifulness should have come to me, and Mrs. Beckwith, who is good
as gold, though a poor manager with babies, shouldn't ever have any
luck. I don't understand, but I'm awful thankful. I wish I could let
God kn