"What do you suppose would happen then?" asked Laura, after awhile. "We shouldn't be anybody's children."
"Yes, we should," said Frank; "we should be God's.'
"Everybody else is that,--_besides_," said Laura.
"We shall have black silk pantalets again, I suppose,"--she began, afresh, looking down at her white ones with double crimped ruffles,--"and Mrs. Gibbs will come in and help, and we shall have to pipe and overcast."
"O, Laura, how nice it was ever so long ago!" cried Frank, suddenly, never heeding the pantalets, "when mother sent us out to ask company to tea,--that pleasant Saturday, you know,--and made lace pelerines for our dolls while we were gone! It's horrid, when other girls have mothers, only to have a _housekeeper_! And pretty soon we sha'n't have anything, only a little corner, away back, that we can't hardly recollect."
"They'll do something with us; they always do," said Laura, composedly.
The children of this world, even _as_ children, are wisest in their generation. Frank believed they would be God's children; she could not see exactly what was to come of that, though, practically. Laura knew that people always did something; something would be sure to be done with them. She was not frightened; she was even a little curious.
A head came up at the corner of the shed behind them, a pair of shoulders,--high, square, turned forward; a pair of arms, long thence to the elbows, as they say women's are who might be good nurses of children; the hands held on to the sides of the steep steps that led up from the bricked yard. The young woman's face was thin and strong; two great, clear, hazel eyes looked straight out, like arrow shots; it was a clear, undeviating glance; it never wandered, or searched, or wavered, any more than a sunbeam; it struck full upon whatever was there; it struck _through_ many things that were transparent to their quality. She had square, white, strong teeth, that set together like the faces of a die; they showed easily when she spoke, but the lips closed over them absolutely and firmly. Yet they were pleasant lips, and had a smile in them that never went quite out; it lay in all the muscles of the mouth and chin; it lay behind, in the living spirit that had moulded to itself the muscles.