might like a piece of cake.”
The next ten minutes seemed to Becky like a sort of delirium. Sara opened a cupboard, and gave her a thick slice of cake. She seemed to rejoice when it was devoured in hungry bites. She talked and asked questions, and laughed until Becky’s fears actually began to calm themselves, and she once or twice gathered boldness enough to ask a question or so herself, daring as she felt it to be.
“Is that—” she ventured, looking longingly at the rose-colored frock. And she asked
her circumstances, and now and then she talked these things over to Ermengarde as time went on.
“Things happen to people by accident,” she used to say. “A lot of nice accidents have happened to me. It just HAPPENED that I always liked lessons and books, and could remember things when I learned them.