one is but a plain
stenographer and the other an old Irishwoman, but with the faithful,
loving heart of her kind. To me there is no better kind anywhere, and
Grandma Linton is the type as she is the flower of it. So that you shall
agree with me I will tell you their story, her story and the child's,
exactly as they have lived it, except that I will not tell you the name of
the town they live in or their own true names, because Kate herself does
not know all of it, and it is best that she shall not--yet.

When I say at the very outset that Margaret Linton, Kate's mother, was
Margaret Linton all her brief sad life, you know the reason why, and there
is no need of saying more. She was a brave, good girl, innocent as she was
handsome. At nineteen she was scrubbing offices to save her widowed
mother, whom rheumatism had crippled. That was how she met the young man
who made love to her, and listened to his false promises, as girls have
done since time out of mind to their undoing. She was nineteen when her
baby was born. From that day, as long as she lived, no word of reproach
fell from her mother's lips. "My Maggie" was more than ever the pride of
the widow's heart since the laughter had died in her bonny eyes. It was as
if in the fatherless child the strongest of all bonds had come between the
two silent women. Poor Margaret closed her eyes with the promise of her
mother that she would never forsake her baby, and went to sleep with a
tired little sigh.

Kate was three years old when her mother died. It was no time then for
Grandma Linton to be bothered with the rheumatics. It was one thing to be
a worn old woman with a big strong daughter to do the chores for you,
quite another to have this young life crying out to you for food and
shelter and care, a winsome elf putting two plump little arms around one's
neck and whispering with her mouth close to your ear, "I love oo,
Grannie." With the music of the baby voice in her ears the widow girded up
her loins and went out scrubbing, cleaning, became janitress of the
tenement in which she and Kate occupied a two-room flat--anything so that
the thorns should be plucked from the path of the child's blithesome feet.
Seven years she strove for her "lamb." When Kate was ten and getting to be
a big girl, she faced the fact that she could do it no longer. She was
getting too old.

What struggles it cost, knowing her, I can guess; but she brought that
sacrifice too. Friends who were go