Daybreak A Story for Girls

Excerpt

Long before it was light, little feet were passing up and down those great stone stairs, little voices whispered in the corridors, little night-dresses rustled by the superintendent's door. She did not think of sleeping, for though the moon still hung in the sky, it was Christmas morning—five o'clock on Christmas morning at the Orphanage; and the little ones had everything their own way on Christmas Day. So she sat up in bed, with the candle lighted beside her, bending her head over a book she held in her hand, and often smiling to herself as she listened to the sounds that revealed the children's joy. She was a grey-headed woman, with a face that might have been stern if the lines about the mouth had not been so gentle; a face, too, that was care-worn, yet full of peace. A tall night-cap surmounting her silvery grey hair gave her a quaint, even laughable appearance; but the orphan children reverenced the nightcap because they loved the head that, night after night, bent over them as a mother's might have done.