d scowled at
her, and stalked away muttering to himself.

His mother saw him from her window, and she too knew what was the
trouble with her boy; but she only dropped a few tears among the
potato-parings, and resolved to make griddle-cakes for supper,--as
though Leonard were still a child whose heart could be cheered
through his stomach. As Mrs. Davitt laid down her knife to wipe her
eyes, she heard the barking of a dog, and then a rapid double knock on
the half-open kitchen-door.

"Come in, Miss," she said, rising and wiping her hands on her gingham
apron. "Come in and take the rocker. Don't be standin' when sittin'
down is chape enough, even for the poor. It's yourself hezn't forgot
me, nor me bit o' farina."

"No, indeed, Mrs. Davitt, I did not forget you: but you won't get your
farina after all; for I met some poor men in distress, and I handed
over all the sea-moss to them."

"Poor craytyurs! Wuz they that hungry they could ate it raw?"

"Hardly," answered Winifred, smiling at her remembrance of the
peculiarly well-fed looking recipients of her bounty, "they were not
hungry at all; but they had come to grief with a molasses jug. The
carriage and everything in it was sticky, and I don't know what they
would have done to get it clean without your moss; but you shall
surely have some more to-morrow, and now tell me how you are feeling."

"Is it meself? Thank ye kindly, me dear. I'm jest accordin' to the
common, save where I'm worse; me legs ache me nights, and I fale the
washin' in me back some days; but if me moind wuz right, it's little
I'd moind the thrubble in me bones."

"Why, what is wrong, Mrs. Davitt?" Winifred asked with sympathy in her
voice. "The children all look well. John's cheeks are red as apples,
and Katie is as round as a butter-ball."

"Oh, the childers is all right," answered Mrs. Davitt, with an air of
mystery, but evidently not unwilling to be pressed further as to the
source of her trouble.

"Surely it is not your husband? He looked better than usual this
morning when he came around to the White House, and he had as fine a
catch of fish as I have seen this summer."

"Yea, himself's all right."

"Then it must be Leonard; but I am sure he is a boy of whom any mother
might be proud."

"Proud? Yea, but many's the proud heart is the sore heart."

"Tell me all about it," said her young visitor, laying her delicate
hand on the red fingers which still clasped the bone-handled steel
kni