ss, she went and picked the motherless boy up and laid his head
on her breast.

"Pore Freddie," she said, "I wish you could stay here all the time and
play with the other little ones."

The child looked up at her with wondering eyes. "I kin stay till mamma
comes back," he answered.

"But, Freddie dear, mamma won't come back any more. She 's"--the woman
hesitated--"she 's in heaven."

"I want my mamma to come back," moaned the child. "I don't want her to
stay in heaven."

"But you must n't cry, Freddie; an', some day, you kin go an' see
mamma."

The child's curiosity got the better of his grief. He asked, "Is heaven
far, Mis' Davis?"

"Yes, dear, awful far," she answered. But she was wrong. Heaven is not
far from the warm heart and tender hands of a good woman.

The child's head drooped, and he drowsed in her arms.

"Put him to bed, Melissy,--pore little fellow," said her husband in
husky tones. He had been listening and watching them around the edge of
his paper. The child slept on, while the woman undressed him and laid
him in the bed.

On the morrow the women dropped in one by one, until a half-dozen or
more were there, to plan the boy's future. They were all poor, and most
of them had families of their own. But all hoped that there might be
some plan devised whereby Margaret's boy might find a refuge without
going to the orphans' asylum, an institution which is the detestation
of women. Mrs. Davis, in expressing her feelings, expressed those of all
the others: "I hate so to think of the pore little feller goin' to one
o' them childern's homes. The boys goin' around in them there drab
clothes o' theirs allus look like pris'ners to me, an' they ain't much
better off."

"An' then childern do learn so much weekedness in them places from the
older ones," put in another.

"Oh, as fur that matter, he 'll learn devilment soon enough anywhere,"
snapped Mrs. Warren, "with that owdacious father o' his before him. I
would n't take the child by no means, though his mother an' me was
friends, fur blood 's bound to tell, an' with sich blood as he 's got in
him I don't know what he 'll come to, an' I 'm shore I don't want to be
a-raisin' no gallus-birds."

The women felt rather relieved that Mrs. Warren so signally washed her
hands of Freddie. That was one danger he had escaped. The woman in
question had, as she said, been a close friend of Margaret's, and, as
such, an aider in her habits of intemperance. It had be