nd
nor Jack to bother with. She sang a few hymns she knew, she said over
several, little poems she had learned and spelled a few words. Bridget
had turned the gas low, and she couldn't reach it without getting on
a chair or she could have read. So she told herself a story that she
had read.

It was very comfortable. She was getting a bit sleepy. Suppose she
took a teeny nap as she did sometimes when she was waiting for
Bridget. So she shook up the old cushion, brought up the stool, sat on
that and laid her head in the chair. And now she wasn't a bit sleepy.
She thought of the stove and put on some coal, lest she _might_ fall
asleep.

She hoped it would be warmer tomorrow when she took out the twins.
Then she would venture to stop at the book store window and look at
the pictures on the magazine covers. There was a baby that looked so
like the twins it made her laugh. She didn't think the twins pretty at
all. They had round chubby faces and almost round eyes, and mouths
that looked as if they were just ready to whistle, and brown fuzzy
hair without a bit of curl in it. But they _were_ good, "as good as
kittens," their mother said. She did so wish she had a kitten. She had
brought such a pretty one from the store one day, a real maltese with
black whiskers, but Bridget said she couldn't have a cat forever
round under her feet and made her take it back.

Jack was past five and very pretty, but bad as he could be. Bridget
said he was a "holy terror," but she thought holiness was goodness and
didn't see the connection. He was a terror, that any one could see.

There was a queer shady look in the corners. She wasn't a bit afraid.
The children at Bethany Home weren't allowed to be. She liked this a
great deal better. She wasn't compelled to eat her whole breakfast off
of oatmeal, and always had such lovely desserts for dinner. And
sometimes Mrs. Borden gave her and Jack a banana or a bit of candy.
Oh, yes, she would much rather live here even if Jack was bad and
pinched her occasionally though his mother slapped him for it, or
pinched him back real hard.

What made this lovely, rosy, golden light in the room? It was like a
soft sunset. She had been saying over a lot of Mother Goose rhymes; of
course she was too old for such nonsense and Jack didn't like them.
And in "One, two, buckle my shoe," she wondered which she liked best:
"Nineteen, twenty, my stomach's empty," or "nineteen, twenty, I've
got a plenty." That was Be