bed, too, darlin', for we've a hard day's work to-morrow."

It was Carmen's second night in New York, and as the girl silently
followed the puffing old woman up the several long, dark flights of
stairs to the little, cheerless room under the eaves, it seemed to her
that her brain must fly apart with the pressure of its mental
accumulation. The great building in which she was now sheltered, the
kitchen, with its marvels of equipment, gas stoves, electric lights,
annunciators, and a thousand other equally wonderful appliances which
the human mind has developed for its service and comfort, held her
fascinated, despite her situation, while she swelled with questions
she dared not ask. Notwithstanding the anxiety which she had not
wholly suppressed, her curiosity, naive, eager, and insatiable, rose
mountain high. Sister Katherine had been kind to her, had received her
with open arms, and given her light tasks to perform. And many times
during the long afternoon the old woman had relaxed entirely from her
assumed brusqueness and stooped to lay a large, red hand gently upon
the brown curls, or to imprint a resounding kiss upon the flushed
cheek. Now, as night was settling down over the great, roaring city,
the woman took the homeless waif into her big heart and wrapped her in
a love that, roughly expressed, was yet none the less tender and
sincere.

"Ye can ask the Virgin, honey, to send ye to yer frinds," said the
woman, as they sat in the gloaming before the window and looked out
over the kindling lights of the city.

"What good would that do, Sister?"

"Not much, I guess, honey," answered the woman frankly. "Troth, an'
I've asked her fer iverything in my time, from diamonds to a husband,
an' she landed me in a convint! But I ain't complainin'."

"You didn't ask in the right way, Sister--"

"Faith, I asked in ivery way I knew how! An' whin I had th' carbuncle
on me neck I yelled at her! Sure she may have answered me prayer, fer
th' whoop I gave busted the carbuncle, an' I got well. Ye nivir kin
tell, honey. An' so I ain't complainin'."

"But, Sis--I can't call you Sister!" pleaded the girl, going to the
woman and twining her arms about her neck.

"Och, honey darlin'"--tears started from the old woman's eyes and
rolled down her wrinkled cheeks--"honey darlin', call me Katie, just
old Katie. Och, Holy Virgin, if I could have had a home, an' a
beautiful daughter like you--!" She clasped the girl in her great arms
and