nor woman in all the State cared enough
for them to make a fight for their childhood.

They were children only in age. Their little forms were not the forms
of children, but of diminutive men and women, on whose backs the
burden of earning their living had been laid, ere the frames had
acquired the strength to bear it.

Stunted in mind and body, they were little solemn, pygmy peoples,
whom poverty and overwork had canned up and compressed into
concentrated extracts of humanity. The flavor--the juices of
childhood--had been pressed out.

"'N no wonder," thought the Bishop, as he looked down upon them from
his crude platform, "for them little things works six days every week
in the factory from sun-up till dark, an' often into the night, with
jes' forty minutes at noon to bolt their food. O God," he said softly
to himself, "You who caused a stream of water to spring up in the
wilderness that the life of an Ishmaelite might be saved, make a
stream of sentiment to flow from the heart of the world to save these
little folks."

Miss Patsy Butts, whose father, Elder Butts of the Hard-shell faith,
owned a fertile little valley farm beyond the mountain, was organist.
She was fat and so red-faced that at times she seemed to be oiled.

She was painfully frank and suffered from acute earnestness.

And now, being marriageable, she looked always about her with shy,
quick, expectant glances.

The other object in life, to Patsy, was to watch her younger brother,
Archie B., and see that he kept out of mischief. And perhaps the
commonest remark of her life was:

"Maw, jus' look at Archie B.!"

This was a great cross for Archie B., who had been known to say
concerning it: "If I ever has any kids, I'll never let the old'uns
nuss the young'uns. They gits into a bossin' kind of a habit that
sticks to 'em all they lives."

To-day Miss Patsy was radiantly shy and happy, caused by the fact
that her fat, honest feet were encased in a pair of beautiful new
shoes, the uppers of which were clasped so tightly over her ankles as
to cause the fat members to bulge in creases over the tops, as
uncomfortable as two Sancho Panzas in armor.

"Side-but'ners," said Mrs. Butts triumphantly to Mrs. O'Hooligan of
Cottontown,--"side-but'ners--I got 'em for her yistiddy--the fust
that this town's ever seed. La, but it was a job gittin' 'em on
Patsy. I had to soak her legs in cold water nearly all night, an'
then I broke every knittin' needle in the