BERTHA.

(||UCH a shrinking, blushing, little figure it was, hiding
: partly behind the portiére, with cyes full of wonder
at the gay scene before her. “A hundred chil-
. dren,” she thought, “and all the girls have on
party dresses but me!” She looked down at her dark-blue
merino dress and white apron with a feeling of discontent, and
drew in her feet lest some one should spy the laced shoes and —
white stockings and make some jeering remark about them.
Never before in Bertha’s life did she remember feeling so
entirely out of place. She had lived a strange, unchildlike
life, shut up in a great house with her grandmother and her

 
 

governess. Even the big garden, in which Bertha was allowed
to play quietly, was surrounded by a high stone wall, so that
she knew little of the outside world. To be sure, she drove out

nearly every day in state with her grandmother, but the drive
62