of felt as though I should like
to put in. Seemed to me it was a--but there! I haven't any right to
stump _you_."

"Wouldn't it be rather an aggravation? I don't suppose you would
mean to stay altogether?"

"Not unless--but don't go putting it into my head, Mrs. Ripwinkley.
I shall feel as if I _was_. And I don't think it goes quite so far
as that, yet. We ain't never stumped to more than one thing at a
time. What she wants is to be straightened out. And when things once
looked _my_ way, she might get a girl, you see. Anyhow, 'twould
encourage Pinkie, and kind of set her going. Pinkie likes things
nice; but it's such a Hoosac tunnel to undertake, that she just lets
it all go, and gets off up-stairs, and sticks a ribbon in her hair.
That's all she _can_ do. I s'pose 'twould take a fortnight, maybe?"

"Take it, Luclarion," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, smiling. Luclarion
understood the smile.

"I s'pose you think it's as good as took. Well, perhaps it is--spoke
for. But it wasn't me, you know. Now what'll you do?"

"Go into the kitchen and make the pudding."

"But then?"

"We are not stumped for then, you know."

"There was a colored girl here yesterday, from up in Garden Street,
asking if there was any help wanted. I think she came in partially,
to look at the flowers; the 'sturtiums _are_ splendid, and I gave
her some. She was awfully dressed up,--for colors, I mean; but she
looked clean and pleasant, and spoke bright. Maybe she'd come,
temporary. She seemed taken with things. I know where to find her,
and I could go there when I got through with the gruel. Mrs. Scarup
must have that right off."

And Luclarion hurried away.

It was not the first time Mrs. Ripwinkley had lent Luclarion; but
Miss Grapp had not found a kitchen mission in Boston heretofore. It
was something new to bring the fashion of simple, prompt, neighborly
help down intact from the hills, and apply it here to the tangle of
city living, that is made up of so many separate and unrecognized
struggles.

When Hazel came home from school, she went all the way up the garden
walk, and in at the kitchen door. "That was the way she took it
all," she said; "first the flowers, and then Luclarion and what they
had for dinner, and a drink of water; and then up-stairs, to
mother."

To-day she encountered in the kitchen a curious and startling
apparition of change.

A very dusky brown maiden, with a petticoat of flashing purple, and
a jacket of crimson, an