Beyond the gates

From Kirkus Reviews: "With tender compassion and understanding, Dorothy Smith has handled her central figure, the gnomelike little Lydia... Lydia was an orphan asylum child whose smallness and homeliness made her almost impossible to place, though her age was all of fourteen. Then Miss Marion came along, in desperate need of a maid-of-all-work. And once Lydia- a silent, terrified child- was installed in the first room of her own she had had and given the run of the kitchen where she was wholly competent, life was settled for her…"