Je-ru-sha Ab-bott
You are wan-ted
In the of-fice,
And I think you’d
Better hurry up!

Tommy Dillon, who had joined the choir, came singing up the stairs and down the corridor, his chant growing louder as he approached room F. Jerusha wrenched herself from the window and refaced the troubles of life.

`Who wants me?’ she cut into Tommy’s chant with a note of sharp anxiety.

Mrs. Lippett in the office,
And I think she’s mad. 
Ah-a-men!

Tommy piously intoned, but his accent was not entirely malicious.  Even the most hardened little orphan felt sympathy for an erring sister who was summoned to the office to face an annoyed matron; and Tommy liked Jerusha even if she did sometimes jerk him by the arm and nearly scrub his nose off.

Jerusha went without comment, but with two parallel lines on her brow.  What could have gone wrong, she wondered.  Were the sandwiches not thin enough?  Were there shells in the nut cakes?  Had a lady visitor seen the hole in Susie Hawthorn’s stocking?  Had—­O horrors!—­ one of the cherubic little babes in her own room F `sauced’ a Trustee?

The long lower hall had not been lighted, and as she came downstairs, a last Trustee stood, on the point of departure, in the open door that led to the porte-cochere.  Jerusha caught only a fleeting impression of the man—­and the impression consisted entirely of tallness.  He was waving his arm towards an automobile waiting in the curved drive.  As it sprang into motion and approached, head on for an instant, the glaring headlights threw his shadow sharply against the wall inside.  The shadow pictured grotesquely elongated legs and arms that ran along the floor and up the wall of the corridor.  It looked, for all the world, like a huge, wavering daddy-long-legs.

Jerusha’s anxious frown gave place to quick laughter.  She was by nature a sunny soul, and had always snatched the tiniest excuse to be amused.  If one could derive any sort of entertainment out of the oppressive fact of a Trustee, it was something unexpected to the good.  She advanced to the office quite cheered by the tiny episode, and presented a smiling face to Mrs. Lippett.  To her surprise the matron was also, if not exactly smiling, at least appreciably affable; she wore an expression almost as pleasant as the one she donned for visitors.

`Sit down, Jerusha, I have something to say to you.’  Jerusha dropped into the nearest chair and waited with a touch of breathlessness.  An automobile flashed past the window; Mrs. Lippett glanced after it.

`Did you notice the gentleman who has just gone?’

`I saw his back.’

`He is one of our most affluential Trustees, and has given large sums of money towards the asylum’s support.  I am not at liberty to mention his name; he expressly stipulated that he was to remain unknown.’

Jerusha’s eyes widened slightly; she was not accustomed to being summoned to the office to discuss the eccentricities of Trustees with the matron.