.
Grubbling had a headache, and wanted to get them all off out of the way.

Bridget Foye sat at her apple stand in the cheery morning sunlight, red
cheeks and russets ranged fair and tempting before her, and a pile of
roasted peanuts, and one of delicate molasses candy, such as nobody but
she knew how to make, at either end of the board.

Bridget Foye was the tidiest, kindliest, merriest apple woman in all
Mishaumok. Everybody whose daily path lay across that southeast corner
of the Common, knew her well, and had a smile, and perhaps a penny for
her; and got a smile and a God-bless-you, and, for the penny, a rosy or
a golden apple, or some of her crisp candy in return.

Glory and the baby, sitting down to rest on one of the benches close by,
as their habit was, had one day made a nearer acquaintance with blithe
Bridget. I think it began with Glory--who held the baby up to see the
passing show of a portion of a menagerie in the street, and heard two
girls, stopping just before her to look, likewise, say they'd go and see
it perform next day--uttering something of her old soliloquy about "good
times," and why she "warn't ever in any of 'em." However it was, Mrs.
Foye, in her buxom cheeriness, was drawn to give some of it forth to the
uncouth-looking, companionless girl, and not only began a chat with her,
after the momentary stir in the street was over, and she had settled
herself upon her stool, and leaning her back against a tree, set
vigorously to work again at knitting a stout blue yarn stocking, but
also treated Bubby and Baby to some bits of her sweet merchandise, and
told them about the bears and the monkeys that had gone by, shut up in
the gay, red-and-yellow-painted wagons.

So it became, after this first opening, Glory's chief pleasure to get
out with the children now and then, of a sunny day, and sit here on the
bench by Bridget Foye, and hear her talk, and tell her, confidentially,
some of her small, incessant troubles. It was one more life to draw
from--a hearty, bright, and wholesome life, besides. She had, at last,
in this great, tumultuous, indifferent city, a friendship and a
resource.

But there was a certain fair spot of delicate honor in Glory's nature
that would not let her bring Bubby and Baby in any apparent hope of what
they might get, gratuitously, into their mouths. She laid it down, a
rule, with Master Herbert, that he was not to go to the apple stand with
her unless he had first put by a p