book lay on a little table with a plate beside it covered
with cake-crumbs, and there were crumbs on the richly colored Turkish
rug and on the arm of the tapestry-covered chair on the edge of which
Elsie perched.

Surely there was some mistake, some monstrous mistake! She had somehow
been brought to the wrong house. It wasn't possible that a gentleman
like Mr. Middleton could belong to a household such as this, she was
saying incredulously to herself, when a shadow fell athwart the
threshold and she looked up to see Mrs. Middleton entering on her
husband's arm.

Mrs. Middleton was the key to the enigma, though Elsie's mind wasn't
sufficiently alert to grasp the fact at the moment. She stood beside
her tall, immaculate husband, a short, rather stout, flabby-looking
woman with a sallow face wherein keener eyes than Elsie's might have
detected traces of former prettiness, and frowsy, ginger-colored hair
that had been curled on an iron. She wore a dingy pink tea-gown
bordered with swan's-down, cut rather low and revealing a yellow,
scrawny neck. A large cameo brooch took the place of a missing frog,
and a pin in the hem disclosed missing stitches. Her hands were
covered with rings, her feet thrust into shapeless knitted boots.

She smiled, cried, "Elsie!" in a weak, sentimental manner, and opened
her arms wide as if expecting the girl to fly into them.

Elsie, who had risen, advanced stiffly and reached out her hand in
gingerly fashion. But Mrs. Middleton gathered her, willy-nilly, into a
warm embrace, holding her close against the dingy pink flannel.

Elsie could not struggle against it, as she was moved to do; she could
not burst into tears at the indignity; she could not rush out of the
house and back to the train, as she longed to do, with the sense of
outrage goading her. She was forced to sit down weakly with the others.

Mrs. Middleton gazed at her fondly.

"Dear child! Little orphan stranger!" she cried. "How I have longed
for this hour! Indeed, I so longed for it that at the last moment my
strength failed me, and when the train whistled I had to drop on my bed
in exhaustion. But enough of that. Welcome to our home and hearts!"

Murmuring some chill, indistinct monosyllable, Elsie glanced dumbly at
Mr. Middleton, who was looking at his wife as tenderly as if she had
been all that Elsie had expected her to be. Were they both mad?

"Jack, dear, you have never asked Elsie to take off her things--