lt as if she would like to go off on the rocks somewhere, and shout and
jump and sing.

As she walked slowly along past the stores and the crowded tenement-houses,
swinging her little letter-basket on her arm, and dreaming away with her
great brown eyes, as such young eyes will always dream upon a summer's
day, there suddenly struck upon that happy thought of hers a mournful
sound.

It was a human groan.

It grated on Gypsy's musing, as a file grates upon smooth marble; she
started, and looked up. The sound came from an open window directly over
her head. What could anybody be groaning about such a day as this? Gypsy
felt a momentary impatience with the mournful sound; then a sudden
curiosity to know what it meant. A door happened to be open near her, and
she walked right in, without a second thought, as was the fashion in which
Gypsy usually did things. A pair of steep stairs led up from the bit of an
entry, and a quantity of children, whose faces and hands were decidedly
the worse for wear, were playing on them.

"How do you do?" said Gypsy. The children stared.

"Who lives here?" asked Gypsy, again. The children put their fingers in
their mouths.

"Who is that groaning so?" persisted Gypsy, repressing a strong desire to
box their ears. The children crawled a little further up-stairs, and
peered at her from between their locks of shaggy hair, as if they
considered her a species of burglar. At this moment a side door opened,
and a red-faced woman, who was wiping her hands on her apron, put her head
out into the entry, and asked, in rather a surly tone, what was wanted.

"Who is that groaning?" repeated Gypsy.

"Oh, that's nobody but Grandmother Littlejohn," said the woman, with a
laugh, "she's always groanin'clock."

"But what does she groan for?" insisted Gypsy, her curiosity nowise
diminished to see a person who could be "always groanin'clock," through
not only one, but many, of such golden summer days.

"Oh, I s'pose she's got reason enough, for the matter of that," said the
woman, carelessly; "she's broke a bone,--though she do make a terrible
fuss over it, and very onobligin'clock it is to the neighbors as has the
lookin'clock after of her."

"Broken a bone! Poor thing, I'm going right up to see her!" said Gypsy,
whose compassion was rising fast.

"Good luck to you!" said the woman, with a laugh Gypsy did not like very
much. It only strengthened her resolution, however, and she ran up the
narrow sta