Polly stopped and asked her what was the name of the place.

“Y.W.C.A.,” said the Aid, smiling.

Polly gave a sigh of relief.  “I know what that is,” she said.  “Mr. Ellis said that was the place to go when you go to a city.  Will you let me stay until I find a school?”

“We’ll find the school,” said the other woman.  “That is what we are for; we look after girls like you.  We are glad to find a girl who wants to go to school.”

Polly laid her pack down to change hands and looked about her in delight.  The big brick buildings, the store-windows, even the street-signs with their flaring colors, were all beautiful to her.

“Gee!” she said, “I like the city—­it’s swell!”

Polly was taken to the office of the secretary of the Y.W.C.A., and there, under the melting influence of Miss Bradshaw’s kind eyes and sweet voice, she told all her hopes and fears.

“Our teacher has gone to be a soldier and we could not get another, for they say it is too lonesome—­out our way—­and how can it be lonesome?  There’s children in every house.  But, anyway, lady-teachers won’t come and the men are all gone to the war.  I’ll bet I won’t be scared to teach when I grow up, but of course I won’t be a lady; it’s different with them—­they are always scared of something.  We have a cabin for the teacher, and three chairs and a painted table and a stove and a bed, and a brass knob on the door, and we always brought cream and eggs and bread for the teacher; and we washed his dishes for him, and the girl that had the best marks all week could scrub his floor on Friday afternoons.  He was so nice to us all that we all cried when he enlisted, but he explained it all to us—­that there are some things dearer than life and he just felt that he had to go.  He said that he would come back if he was not killed.  Maybe he will only have one arm and one leg, but we won’t mind as long as there is enough of him to come back.  We tried and tried to get another teacher, but there are not enough to fill the good schools, and ours is twenty miles from a station and in a foreign settlement....  I’m foreign, too,” she added honestly; “I’m Russian.”

“The Russians are our allies,” said the secretary, “and you are a real little Canadian now, Polly, and you are not a bit foreign.  I was born in Tipperary myself, and that is far away from Canada, too.”

“Oh, yes, I know about it being a long way there,” Polly said.  “But that doesn’t matter, it is the language that counts.  You see my mother can’t talk very good English and that is what makes us foreign, but she wants us all to know English, and that is why she let me come away, and I will do all I can to learn, and I will be a teacher some day, and then I will go back and plant the garden and she will send me butter, for I will live in the cabin.  But it is too bad that we cannot have a teacher to come to us, for now, when I am away, there is no one to teach my mother English, for Mary does not speak the English well by me, and the other children will soon forget it if we cannot get a teacher.”