“My legs,” she said, “same ones.  And my cheeks and my hair”—­the latter was pulled with vigor—­“and my feet and my hands—­all me, and in a taxi-cab going Christmas shopping and maybe to a marriage, and I didn’t know he was living last week!  Father says I mustn’t speak to people I don’t know, but how can you know them if you don’t speak?  I was born lucky, and I’m so glad I’m living that if I was a rooster I’d crow.  Oh, Mr. Van, are you ready?”

The next few hours to Carmencita were the coming true of dreams that had long been denied, and from one thrill to another she passed in a delicious ecstasy which made pinching of some part of her body continually necessary.  While Van Landing dressed she waited in his library, wandering in wide-eyed awe and on tiptoe from one part of the room to the other, touching here and there with the tips of her fingers a book or picture or piece of furniture, and presently in front of a footstool she knelt down and closed her eyes.

Quickly, however, she opened them and, with head on the side, looked around and listened.  This wasn’t a time to be seen.  The silence assuring, she again shut her eyes very tight and the palms of her hands, uplifted, were pressed together.

“Please, dear God, I just want to thank you,” she began.  “It’s awful sudden and unexpected having a day like this, and I don’t guess to-morrow will be much, not a turkey Christmas or anything like that, but to-day is grand.  I’d say more, but some one is coming.  Amen.”  And with a scramble she was on her feet, the stool behind her, as Van Landing came in the room.

The ride to the office through crowded streets was breathlessly thrilling, and during it Carmencita did not speak.  At the window of the taxi she pressed her face so closely that the glass had continually to be wiped lest the cloud made by her breath prevent her seeing clearly; and, watching her, Van Landing smiled.  What an odd, elfish, wistful little face it was—­keen, alert, intelligent, it reflected every emotion that filled her, and her emotions were many.  In her long, ill-fitting coat and straw hat, in the worn shoes and darned gloves, she was a study that puzzled and perplexed, and at thought of her future he frowned.  What became of them—­these children with little chance?  Was it to try and learn and help that Frances was living in their midst?

In his office Herrick and Miss Davis were waiting.  Work had been pretty well cleared up, and there was little to be done, and as Van Landing saw them the memory of his half-waking, half-dreaming thought concerning them came to him, and furtively he looked from one to the other.

In a chair near the window, hands in her lap and feet on the rounds, Carmencita waited, her eyes missing no detail of the scene about her, and at Miss Davis, who came over to talk to her, she looked with frank admiration.  For a moment there was hesitating uncertainty in Van Landing’s face; then he turned to Herrick.