Far From Home by Nellie P. Strowbridge

the cold air. It was a reminder of when he was younger, and one of the older orphans had tricked him into putting his sloppy mouth on a cold metal bar; his lips had frozen onto the bar. His flesh had torn when he tried to get away.
    Peter pulled Clarissa, with jerks and stops, until he had her inside the orphanage gates. Then he tipped the sled over and Clarissa fell into the snow. Owen dropped her crutches beside her. She lifted them slowly, knowing there was no reason for her to rush to get inside the orphanage. She had to go to bed without supper. I’m so hungry, I can almost swallow my tongue for food, she thought as she started up the steps. The other children rushed ahead of her, even Cora.
    Clarissa hadn’t meant to go outside without having her breakfast. She had been drawn to the beauty of the snow, new and unmarked. Now she would go hungry as punishment. Whenever she was late for breakfast and didn’t get supper, the night stretched before her like a long journey she dreaded.
    As soon as she reached the inside of the orphanage, Miss Elizabeth spoke, “Get up the stairs!”
    It was no good for Clarissa to put on a long face. So many times she had struggled to get home from school, knowing it was useless to rush. Though she was feeling famished there would be no supper for her.
    She looked up at the layers of steps she had to climb to be in a dormitory for hours by herself. She stopped to beg. “I only wanted to have fun in the snow.”
    â€œThere are rules to abide by,” the mistress replied in a sharp voice, putting out her hand and pushing Clarissa towards the stairs. She lost her balance, and fell on the floor to the clatter of her braces and crutches.
    â€œYou are letting your stubbornness overcome your sense,” the mistress added, her brown eyes threatening. “I’m going to the kitchen to get a stick. That will knock the Irish sulk out of you.”
    As Clarissa was getting to her feet, she saw the mistress coming back with the rod. Old Keziah can beat the black man out of me. I’m not going upstairs and I’m not alI Irish, she thought angrily . Missus Frances told me I have French blood from my mother’s side, mixed with the English and Irish blood from my father.
    Miss Elizabeth held the stick and frowned at Clarissa. “I won’t let you go to the next birthday party if you don’t get up the stairs now.”
    The next birthday party would be for her and Peter in January. Last year, when she had untied the parcel holding her mother’s birthday gift, she’d found a tiny slide projector with built-in slides of children and animals. She took the projector out of her treasure bag only when she was alone, for fear someone would take it. One day she left it on the bed; when she came back to the dormitory, it had disappeared. The other girls denied seeing it.
    Clarissa started up the stairs, passing the lantern that stayed lit in the hall at night, and went into the dark room, wishing for a piece of hard tack. She got ready for bed, and slid under the warm counterpane. She soon drifted past her hunger into a sound sleep.
    She awoke startled. For a moment she thought she was back at the hospital and rats were gnawing on the walls. It was only the other girls munching on hard tack. Every second suppertime, Ilish brought out a pan holding cakes of hard tack halved and buttered, ready for the children to take to their dormitories. The sound of the other girls filling their bellies was enough to make Clarissa want to be good, though she often wondered what it was about her that was so bad.
    She was falling back to sleep when a beam of light touched her eyelids. Miss Elizabeth was standing by her bed holding a lamp. “Now Clarissa,” she said, loud enough for the other girls to hear, “be sure to use the lobby before you go to sleep. You know what can happen.”
    It had not happened for a long time and Old Keziah’s words shamed