let on, and I got washing;
but the lady didn't pay me, and oh, Lizzie, grandaddy's sick and
I--couldn't help it."

"Couldn't help what?" asked Elizabeth, puzzled over the incoherent
recital. "Tell me all about it, Eppie."

"Tell me, dear," she patted her as though she had been a hurt child.

So Eppie began at the day they came to Toronto and told their whole sad
history. They had lived with her father for a time. He had written
them to come, for he had a little grocery store and was doing well. He
had been kind and good at first, and they had been happy. But he had
began to drink again--drink had always been his trouble, and at last
everything had to be sold and he went away West, leaving her and her
grandfather alone. Then commenced a sorrowful story--the story of
incompetence struggling with greed and want. They would have starved
she declared only for Charles Stuart. It was he was the good kind lad.
He had met her on the street one day last autumn and for a long while
he had done everything to help them. He had found a place where
grandaddy could board, and got work for her again and again. But she
had always failed. "I tried, Lizzie," she said, sitting before her
friend with hanging head, twisting the corner of her ragged apron
pitifully, "but I'd never been learned how to do things, and I guess I
was awful slow. When the ladies scolded I would just be forgetting
everything, and then they would send me away. And when Charles Stuart
got me a place at Mrs. Dalley's and I lost it, too, I was that ashamed
I couldn't tell him. So we moved down here to this house, for I'd
saved a little money, and grandaddy was pleased because he said it was
a home of our own again, and he didn't seem to mind the water coming in
on the bed. But the rent's awful dear, and the man that owns it he
said he'd send me to jail if I didn't pay him next time. I hadn't any
money last time, because the lady I worked for wouldn't pay me. Oh,
Lizzie, don't you think rich people ought to pay folks that work for
them?"

"Who didn't pay you?" asked Elizabeth, her eyes burning.

"Miss Kendall. She's a grand lady and works in the church and Charles
Stuart asked her to let me work for her. But she'd always tell me to
come back some other day when I went and asked her for money, and next
week they're going to turn us out. Oh, Lizzie, do you mind yon Mr.
Huntley that put grandaddy and me off our farm? He owns this house and
now he's