dreadful organ-grinders, and all that." It was a long time before
she found one at all to her mind, but finally she was accosted by a
little girl, who looked wretched enough, to be sure,--tattered, and
sickly, and starved. She was not quite up to the mark as to
prettiness, though she had soft, sorrowful eyes and a delicate mouth.
Hunger, cold, and ill-treatment are not very favorable to beauty. Then
the name she gave was decidedly unromantic,--_Molly Magee_. But the
poor child told a piteous story, which soon brought tears to Bessie's
gentle eyes,--how her father was dead of fever, and her mother a
suffering invalid; how she was obliged to beg in the streets, from
morning till night, to obtain food for that poor dear mother, three
darling little brothers, and two sisters, twins and _blind_! It was a
hard case, surely, and Bessie offered at once to go home with her
petitioner, to see what she could do towards alleviating the family
distress. The little mendicant hesitated at first, and attempted to
dissuade her, but at last, as Bessie obstinately insisted on her own
plan of benevolence, she yielded, and rather sullenly led the way
homeward. Ah, what a way it was! down one dirty street and up
another,--through vile courts and alleys reeking with filth, swarming
with idle, loud-voiced men, wretched-looking women, slatternly girls,
and forlorn children. Bessie's heart grew sick and her courage failed
her. If she had known the way back, she would gladly have made an
inglorious retreat!

The guide at last conducted her down a flight of slippery steps,
leading to the basement of a squalid old tenement-house, in the five
stories of which more than as many families were packed, layer on
layer, and Bessie found herself in the very bosom of the distressed
family of her humble little friend. This home of virtuous poverty was
not exactly what she looked for. It was darker, dirtier, more confused
and noisy; it smelt worse. There were the "three darling little
brothers," to be sure, and they were quite satisfactorily ragged. But
Bessie looked in vain for the twin-sisters, whose blindness had so
engaged her sympathies. But she said to herself, "Perhaps they, too,
have gone out begging, with a pair of twin dogs to lead them." The
invalid mother was surely on the mend, for she looked quite stout, and
her face was flushed, though that might be from fever. She sat by an
old stove, smoking a short black pipe.

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