up the suit and
placed the package in my arms, saying, "That's for you, Jimmy."

I raced home and climbed into the attic of our little
four-dollar-a-month cottage, and in the stifling heat under the low roof
I changed my clothes. Then I proudly climbed down to show my blue
suit to my mother. "Where did you get those clothes, James?" she asked
gravely.

I told her about Miss Foraker.

"Did you work for them?"

"No; everything is free," I said.

Mother told me to take the suit off. I went to the attic, blinking a
tear out of my eyes, and changed into my old rags again. Then mother
took the blue suit, wrapped it up carefully and putting it in my hands
told me to take it back to Miss Foraker.

"You don't understand, James," she said. "But these clothes are not for
people like us. These are to be given to the poor."

I have often smiled as I looked back on it. I'll bet there wasn't a dime
in the house. The patches on my best pants were three deep and if laid
side by side would have covered more territory than the new blue suit.
To take those clothes back was the bitterest sacrifice my heart has ever
known.

A few days later there was a fire sale by one of the merchants, and
I got the job of ringing the auction bell. Late in the afternoon the
auctioneer held up a brown overcoat. "Here is a fine piece of goods,
only slightly damaged," he said. He showed the back of the coat where a
hole was burned in it. "How much am I offered?"

I knew that I would get fifty cents for my day's work, so I bid ten
cents--all that I could spare.

"Sold," said the auctioneer, "for ten cents to the kid who rang the bell
all day."

I took the garment home and told my mother how I had bought it for cash
in open competition with all the world. My mother and my aunt set to
work with shears and needles and built me a suit of clothes out of the
brown overcoat. It took a lot of ingenuity to make the pieces come out
right. The trousers were neither long nor short. They dwindled down and
stopped at my calves, half-way above my ankles. What I hated most was
that the seams were not in the right places. It was a patchwork, and
there were seams down the front of the legs where the crease ought to
be. I didn't want to wear the suit, but mother said it looked fine on
me, and if she said so I knew it must be true. I wore it all fall and
half the winter.

The first time I went to Sunday-school, I met Babe Durgon. He set up the
cry:

"