Free Star of Light by Patricia M. St. John Page B

had plenty of medicines, creams, tonics, and drives out in the car, but she could not get warm sunshine in England in January, so they were going southward to a land of blue skies and yellow beaches and calm seas where she would grow strong and brown and healthy.
    She sleepily wondered how her father would know the way, and supposed they would just follow the sun, as the wise men had followed the star. Whenher mother returned with a drink and biscuits on a tray, she found her little daughter fast asleep. She stood looking down on the flushed face and tumbled hair for a moment, then put out the light, opened the big window, and slipped away, leaving Jenny to dream of stars, sunshine, and Christmas trees.

The Holiday Begins

    V ery early one morning in March, the English nurse woke, got out of bed at once, and ran up to her flat roof to look at the weather. It was going to be a fine day, she decided happily, and this was just as it should be, for this was the day she had looked forward to for so long. Her cousin from England was arriving to stay in the hotel for two weeks. Her husband was coming with her, and they were bringing Jenny.
    It was the thought of Jenny that made the English nurse very happy. She woke Kinza, who was lying in a ball on a mattress on the floor, her ginger kitten close beside her. The first thing she always did on waking was to stretch out her hand and make sure that the kitten was there, and if it had gone for awalk she made a terrible fuss. But this morning all was well.
    Hand in hand, the English nurse and Kinza climbed the stairs onto the flat roof and sat down at a low round table, eating breakfast together under a blue spring sky.
    “The little girl is coming today,” announced the nurse, as she tidied up and tried not to trip over Kinza and the kitten, who were playing on the floor with a ball. “We are going to take a holiday. We will go to the market together and buy nice things to eat, and then we’ll make a feast for the little girl.”
    “A feast! A feast!” shouted Kinza, jumping about like a clumsy goat kid, and falling over the wastepaper basket. “I will carry the basket for you. Let’s go now.”
    “Yes, let’s,” said the nurse, and off they went into the sunshine hand in hand. The nurse had not had a weekday holiday for a long time. She usually stayed inside in the morning. But today she had told the people not to come. She was going to be free to get ready for Jenny. Now, while it was still early, she was going to climb up the hillside behind the town and pick flowers.
    It was too far for Kinza, so when they had finished their shopping, she left her on the step of the doughnut shop in the charge of Hamid. She often did this when she was busy, for she felt quite sure that the two children were probably brother and sister and should spend some time together. Kinza was always perfectly safe and happy when Hamid looked after her, although she sometimes ended up rather greasyand not very keen on her dinner. She was very fond of doughnuts and would eat all that were offered her.
    Once by herself, the nurse almost ran up the steep, cobbled streets, past the tumbledown shacks on the outskirts of the town, and out through the gate in the ruined wall that led on to the hillside. She suddenly forgot that she would soon be middle-aged and felt very young indeed. She began picking the flowers that were growing all around her.
    How beautiful they are!
she thought.
I shall bring Jenny up here and we’ll pick them together
.
    As she thought of Jenny, she began to wonder how they would all get on together. Their lives were so different. Once, when they had been growing up together, she and Elizabeth had been like sisters, but Elizabeth had married a rich man and had gone to live in his beautiful home. Jenny had been brought up surrounded by beauty and peace, and had had everything that love and money could give. Aunt Rosemary could have made her home with them, too, but while she was