d Miss Bailey, not surprised at this new
delicacy of feeling in so small and unfortunate and sorely tried a
heart. "Very nice of you indeed."

"Sure I won't let anybody wear it," reiterated Becky, "not 'out they
pays me a penny for walkin' up and down the block, and two cents for
walkin' all round the block mit mine stylish from-plush cape."

"Of course not," Teacher agreed, hastily adjusting herself to this
standard of right dealing.

"No, ma'am," said Becky. "I should never leave nobody have nothings what
you gives me 'out they pays me good. The lady of our floor, she goes on
a dancing-ball over yesterday, and she wants I shall leave her put her
on mit mine cape--she's a awful little lady--only she don't wants she
shall pay me. Und so I ain't let her take it, the while you gives it to
me, and I am loving much mit you."

A teacher who gains the confidence of her small charges, even to a
slight degree, is sure to be made familiar with their family history
unto the third or fourth generation. And so Teacher knew that the
poverty of Becky's home life was embittered and made even harder to bear
by the contrasting elegance of an aunt, who lived, amid rank and
fashion, in the "tony" purlieus of Cherry Street. Her abode consisted,
according to her smarting small relative, of "a room and a closet," a
lavish and extravagant area for a household as small as hers.

"Why," Becky informed Miss Bailey, with upturned palms, upscrewed
shoulders, and upturned eyes, "my aunt, she ain't got only five children
and three boarders!"

It had been the habit of this rich and fashionable dame to pay visits of
state and ceremony to her less fortunate sister-in-law, whose abode
differed from hers only by the subtraction of the room. There, in the
chaste consciousness of an incredible wig and an impenetrable shawl, she
would monopolize many hundreds of cubic feet of space and air; indulge
in conversations of the elegant and fashionable kind, which, so Becky
reported to her teacher, "makes the tears in my mamma's eyes, and gives
my papa shamed feelings," and caused an epidemic of ill-temper, with
resulting slaps and kicks and yelling among her nephews and nieces.

"And what you think?" Becky had sadly added; "she says like that all
times on my mamma, out of Jewish, she says: 'Why don't you never come
over for see me?' Und my mamma, she says all times, mit more tears in
the eyes--bend down your head, Teacher. I likes I shall whisper mit you