![]() She had been on her feet since five that morning, doing everybody’s bidding, scolded and hurried by a nervous matron. Then she dropped down on the window seat and leaned throbbing temples against the cool glass. Jerusha assembled her charges, straightened their rumpled frocks, wiped their noses, and started them in an orderly and willing line toward the dining room to engage themselves for a blessed half hour with bread and milk and prune pudding. Her special care was room F, where eleven little tots, from four to seven, occupied eleven little cots set in a row. Jerusha escaped from the pantry where she had been making sandwiches for the asylum’s guests and turned upstairs to accomplish her regular work. ![]() ![]() But this particular first Wednesday, like its predecessors, finally dragged itself to a close. It was a distressing time and poor Jerusha Abbott, being the oldest orphan, had to bear the brunt of it. Ninety-seven squirming little orphans must be scrubbed and combed and buttoned into freshly starched ginghams and all ninety-seven reminded of their manners, and told to say, Yes, sir, No, sir, whenever a Trustee spoke. ![]() Every floor must be spotless, every chair dustless, and every bed without a wrinkle. The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day-a day to be awaited with dread, endured with courage and forgotten with haste. ![]()
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