? Whaih you live?"

"Oh, I live down on Douglas Street," said Patsy Ann, "an' I's runnin'
away f'om home an' my step-mothah."

The woman looked keenly at her.

"What yo' name?" she said.

"My name's Patsy Ann Meriweather."

"An' is yo' got a step-mothah?"

"No," said Patsy Ann, "I ain' got none now, but I's sut'ny 'spectin'
one."

"What you know 'bout step-mothahs, honey?"

"Mis' Gibson tol' me. Dey sho'ly is awful, missus, awful."

"Mis' Gibson ain' tol' you right, honey. You come in hyeah and set down.
You ain' nothin' mo' dan a baby yo'se'f, an' you ain' got no right to be
trapsein' roun' dis away."

Have you ever eaten muffins? Have you eaten bacon with onions? Have you
drunk tea? Have you seen your little brother John taken up on a full
bosom and rocked to sleep in the most motherly way, with the sweetness
and tenderness that only a mother can give? Well, that was Patsy Ann's
case to-night.

And then she laid them along like ten-pins crosswise of her bed and sat
for a long time thinking.

To Maria Adams about six o'clock that night came a troubled and
disheartened man. It was no less a person than Patsy Ann's father.

"Maria! Maria! What shall I do? Somebody don' stole all my chillen."

Maria, strange to say, was a woman of few words.

"Don' you bothah 'bout de chillen," she said, and she took him by the
hand and led him to where the five lay sleeping calmly across the bed.

"Dey was runnin' f'om home an' dey step-mothah," said she.

"Dey run hyeah f'om a step-mothah an' foun' a mothah." It was a tribute
and a proposal all in one.

When Patsy Ann awakened, the matter was explained to her, and with
penitent tears she confessed her sins.

"But," she said to Maria Adams, "ef you's de kin' of fo'ks dat dey mek
step-mothahs out o' I ain' gwine to bothah my haid no mo'."

_Fifteen_

THE HOME-COMING OF 'RASTUS SMITH

There was a great commotion in that part of town which was known as
"Little Africa," and the cause of it was not far to seek. Contrary to
the usual thing, this cause was not an excursion down the river, nor a
revival, baptising, nor an Emancipation Day celebration. None of these
was it that had aroused the denizens of "Little Africa," and kept them
talking across the street from window to window, from door to door,
through alley gates, over backyard fences, where they stood loud-mouthed
and arms akimboed among laden clothes lines. No, the cause of it all was
that Erastus S