And because Sally herself had frequently been guilty of the same sinful thought, she hurried Eloise, without rebuking her, to the front lawn which always made visitors exclaim, "Why, how pretty! And so homelike! Aren't the poor things fortunate to have such a beautiful home?"
For the front lawn, upon which no orphan was allowed to set foot except in company with a lawnmower or a clipping shears, _was_ beautiful. Now, in early June, it lay in the sun like an immense carpet, studded with round or star-shaped beds of bright flowers. From the front, the building looked stately and grand, too, with its clean red bricks and its big, fluted white pillars. They were the only two orphans in sight, except a pair of overalled boys, their tow heads bare to the hot sun, their lean arms, bare to the shoulders in their ragged shirts, pushing steadily against whirring lawnmowers.
"Oh, nasturtiums!" Eloise crowed, the first happy sound she had made since entering the orphanage.
She broke from Sally's grasp, sped down the cement walk, then plunged into the lush greenness of that vast velvet carpet, entirely unconscious that she was committing one of the major crimes of the institution. Sally, after a stunned moment, sped after her, calling out breathlessly:
"Don't dast to touch the flowers, Eloise! We ain't allowed to touch the flowers! They'd skin us alive!"
But Eloise had already broken the stem of a flaming orange and red nasturtium and was cuddling it against her cheek.
"Put it back, honey," Sally begged, herself committing the unpardonable sin of walking on the grass. "There isn't any place at all you could hide it, and if you carried it in your hand you'd get a licking sure. But don't you cry, Eloise. Sally'll tell you a fairy story in play hour this afternoon."
The two, Sally's heart already swelling with the sweet pain of having found a new child to mother, Eloise's tear-reddened eyes sparkling with anticipation, were hurrying up the path that led around the main building to the weaving rooms in which Sally was to work an extra hour as punishment for her morning's "play-acting," when Clara Hodges came shrieking from behind the building:
"Sal-lee! Sal-lee Ford! Mrs. Stone wants you. In the office!" she added, her voice dropping slightly on a note of horror.