as she hurried home from the grocer's with half-a-dozen eggs
and two lemons, Katie ran out from the gate, and met her halfway down
Budd Street.

"I've been watchin' for ye," said she. "I seen ye go out of an errand,
an' I've been lookin' for ye back. There's to be a grand party at our
house to-morrow night, an' I thought maybe ye'd like to get lave, an'
run over to take a peep at it. Put on yer best frock, and make yer hair
tidy, an' I'll see to yer gettin' a good chance."

Poor Glory colored up, as Mrs. Grabbling might have done if the
President's wife had bidden her. Not so, either. With a glow of feeling,
and an oppression of gratitude, and a humility of delight, that Mrs.
Grubbling, under any circumstances whatever, could have known nothing
about.

"If I only can," she managed to utter, "and, anyhow, I'm sure I'm
thankful to ye a thousand times."

And that night she sat up in her little attic room, after everybody else
was in bed, mending, in a poor fashion, a rent in the faded "best
frock," and sewing a bit of cotton lace in the neck thereof that she had
picked out of the ragbag, and surreptitiously washed and ironed.

Next morning, she went about her homely tasks with an alacrity that Mrs.
Grubbling, knowing nothing of the hope that had been let in upon her
dreariness, attributed wholly to the salutary effect of a "good
scolding" she had administered the day before. The work she got out of
the girl that Thursday forenoon! Never once did Glory leave her
scrubbing, or her dusting, or her stove polishing, to glance from the
windows into the street, though the market boys, and the waiters, and
the confectioners' parcels were going in at the Pembertons' gate, and
the man from the greenhouse, even, drove his cart up, filled with
beautiful plants for the staircase.

She waited, as in our toils we wait for Heaven--trusting to the joy that
was to come.

After dinner, she spoke, with fear and trembling. Her lips turned quite
white with anxiety as she stood before Mrs. Grubbling with the baby in
her arms.

"Please, mum," says Glory, tremulously, "Katie Ryan asked me over for a
little while to-night to look at the party."

Mrs. Grubbling actually felt a jealousy, as if her poor, untutored
handmaid were taking precedence of herself.

"What party?" she snapped.

"At the Pembertons', mum. I thought you knew about it."

"And what if I do? Maybe I'm going, myself."

Glory opened her eyes wide in mingled consternat