e of the girls cried: "Becky'll get the best of
you any time." They were all of them impressed with this fact, when, a
few minutes after, the wary Becky agreed to show Lizzie what she knew of
"kinnergarden" basket-making, if Lizzie would agree to pay her for her
trouble by giving her materials enough to make a basket for herself.

"Ain't she a sharp one?" commented one of the girls to another when they
had left the lunch-room.

"Ain't she, though? She'll get what she can, and hold on to what she's
got every time."

"But she's awful good fun. Didn't she take off Matty Kelley's flat
nose-y way of talkin' to a T?"

"Didn't she!" and the two girls laughed anew at the recollection.

CHAPTER II.

Becky was the only one of the parcel-girls who was in the lunch-room
when this talk about May-day took place. The others lived nearer to the
store, and had gone home to their dinners. They were all a trifle older
than Becky, and a good deal larger. For these reasons, as well as for
the fact that they had been in the establishment quite a while when
Becky entered it, they had put on a great many disagreeable airs toward
the pale-faced little girl when she first appeared, and attempted, as
Becky put it, to "boss" her. They soon found, however, that the
new-comer was too much for them. They expected her to be afraid of
them,--to "stand round" for them. But Miss Becky was not in the least
afraid of them, or, for that matter, of anybody; and as soon as she
understood what they meant, she turned upon them the whole force of that
inimitable mimicry of hers, and "took off" their airs in a manner that
soon set the small army of salesmen and saleswomen into such fits of
laughter that the tables were completely turned upon the tormentors,
and they were only too glad to drop their airs and treat Becky with the
respect that pluck and superior power invariably command. But while thus
constrained to decent behavior before Becky's eyes, behind her back they
gave way to the resentment that they felt against her for her triumph
over them, and let no opportunity slip to say slighting things of her.
Good-natured Lizzie would laugh when they said these things to
her,--when they told her that Becky Hawkins was nothin' but one o' that
low lot who lived down amongst that thieving set by the East Cove
alleys,--that jus' as like as not she was a thief herself; that she was
awful close and stingy, anyway, and saved up every scrap she could find;