d it," broke forth another. "She'd
got down the stairs all safe, and then she thought o' Tim and ran back
for him. She know'd I wasn't to home, and he was all alone; and she
saved him for me,--she saved him for me! She helped him out onto the
roof; 'twas too late for the stairs then, and a fireman got him down the
'scape; but Becky--Becky was behind, and the fire follered so fast, she
made a jump--and fell--oh, Becky! Becky!"

"Hush now!" said the other woman. "Don't keep a-goin' over it; yer worry
her, and it's no use."

"Went back for Tim, saved Tim the prize-fighter!" thought Lizzie, in
dumb amazement.

"The kid'll be all right soon," broke in another voice here.

Lizzie looked up, and saw a rough fellow, who had just come in, gazing
down at Becky with an expression that strangely softened his hard face.

Becky lifted her eyes at the sound of the voice.

"Hello, Jake," she said faintly.

"Hello, Becky, yer'll be all right soon, won't yer?"

"I'm all right now," said Becky, sleepily, "and Tim's all right. He
didn't get burnt, but the basket and all the pretty flowers did. If I
could make another--"

"_I'll_ make another for you," said Lizzie, pressing forward.

"And hang it for Tim?" asked Becky.

"Yes," answered Lizzie. Something in Lizzie's expression, in her tone,
roused Becky's wandering memory, and with a sudden flash of her old
mischief she said,--

"He's a fren' o' mine. Show up, Tim, and lemme interduce yer."

There was a movement on the other side of the table where Becky lay; and
then Lizzie saw, struggling up from a chair, a tiny crippled body,
wasted and shrunken,--the body of a child of seven with a shapely head
and the face of an intelligent boy of fifteen.

"That's him,--that's Tim,--the fightin' gen'leman I tole yer 'bout,"
said Becky, with a gay little smile at the remembrance of her joke and
how she "played it on 'em," and at the look of astonishment now on
Lizzie's face. And still with the gay little smile, but fainter voice,--

"Yer'll tell 'em, Lizzie,--the girls in the store,--how I played it on
'em; and when I git back--I'll--"

"Give her some air; she's faint," cried one of the women.

The tall young rough, Jake, sprang to the window and pulled it open,
letting in a fresh wind that blew straight up from the grassy banks
beyond the Cove.

"Do yer feel better, Becky?" he asked, as he saw her face brighten.

"I--I feel fus' rate--all well, Jake, and--I--I smell the Mayflower