stern New York when your mother
died and we didn't hear of it in a long while. We should not have let
you go to that Home. Were they good to you?"

"Well, you see some of the children were not very good, and they only
gave you so much to eat. Sometimes you felt real hungry. I tried to be
good for I didn't like to be punished," she said naively. "You had to
scrub floors and learn psalms, when you didn't get whipped. I liked
the hymns, only they were not always sweet and pretty, and we went in
school at nine and had one little recess. Then after dinner, and
school until four, and if you missed you had to stay in. You sewed
half an hour then and could play out of doors until six, then you had
supper and went to bed."

"What kind of sewing was it?"

"Oh, you hemmed towels and sheets and pillow cases, and mended. The
little girls couldn't, so you had to look after their things, and darn
their stockings. On Saturday afternoon one of the teachers took you
out walking but it was in the woods and the country. All the girls
were _so_ glad when they were twelve or almost, so they could get
away. Mrs. Johnson was very sharp."

"And the lady you went to live with?"

"Oh she was very nice; and her sister. There was a boy of five and
twin babies--"

"You didn't have to take care of the babies?"

"Only to play with them and amuse them. They were very fat and Mrs.
Borden didn't like me to lift them. Then I used to wheel them in their
carriage. I liked that only when it was very cold--or hot. The stores
were so pretty, and you met other girls. I used to read the books in
the windows; Jack had lots of books. I used to show the pictures to
the babies and tell them stories and they would laugh so, just as if
they understood it all. They were very good and merry, but it was a
long while before they could walk, they were so fat."

"How did she come to let you go?"

"It was one very hot day--and somehow I was so dreadfully tired all
the time, I sat down on a stoop--it was a beautiful, shady street with
great trees, and most everybody had gone away. The babies were not
very well and a little cross. You had to be doing things all the
while, and--I don't know what happened, but I fell off the stoop and
some one picked me up and then Miss Armitage who lived opposite came
over and had me taken to her house and for a long while I just seemed
in the dark and didn't know anything. It was then that Dr. Richards
came. They were all so good,