Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 4.djvu/169



stood at one of the windows of the Asylum, looking thoughtfully down into the yard, where twenty girls were playing.

All had cropped heads, all wore brown gowns and blue aprons, and all were orphans like herself. Some were pretty and some plain, some rosy and gay, some pale and feeble, but all seemed happy and having a good time in spite of many drawbacks.

More than once one of them nodded and beckoned to Patty, but she shook her head decidedly, and still stood, listlessly watching them, and thinking to herself with a child's impatient spirit,—

"Oh, if some one would only come and take me away! I'm so tired of living here I don't think I can bear it much longer."

Poor Patty might well wish for a change; for she had been in the Asylum ever since she could remem-