elieve I ever will," said the little girl soberly.

"Now come up in my room. Mother said I might rip up her pretty blue
plaid silk and have it made over. I came down to hunt up the waist."

She found it in one of the drawers, pinned up in a linen pillow-case.

"And you can have on a white apron," the elder said when they reached
the room.

This had long sleeves and a ruffle round the neck. The little girl was
ever so much improved.

And I think she would have felt comforted if she could have heard the
rest of the talk between the two girls.

"I do wonder if she belongs to the new people," said the girl who
laughed. "They can't be much. They came from the country somewhere."

"But they've bought all the way through to the other street. And ma said
she meant to call on them. Some one told her they owned a big farm in
Yonkers, and one of the young men is to be a doctor. Maybe the little
girl doesn't really belong to them. I wish you hadn't spoken quite so
loud. I'm sure she heard."

"Oh, I don't care!" with an airy toss of the head. "Mother said the
other day she shouldn't bother about new neighbors. Calling on them is
out of style."

Hanny looked out of the window a long while. Then she said gravely:
"Margaret, are all those old Dutch people dead that were in the history?
And where was their Bowery?"

"It is the Bowery out here, but it has changed. That was a long, long
time ago."

"If I'd lived then no one would have laughed about my long frock. I
almost wish I'd been a little girl then."

"Perhaps there were other things to laugh about."

"I don't mind the laughing _now_. But they must have had lovely gardens
full of tulips and roses. There doesn't seem any room about for such
things. And lanes, you know. Did the new people drive the Dutch away?"

"The English came afterward. You will read all about it in history. And
then came the war----"

"That grandmother knows about? Margaret, I think New York is a great,
strange, queer place. There are a good many queernesses, aren't there?"

Margaret assented with a smile.

"Oh, there's father in the wagon!" The little girl was all a tremor of
gladness. He caught her eyes and beckoned, and she ran down. But she
couldn't manage the night-latch, and so Margaret had to follow her.

"Bundle up my little girl," he said. "I've got to drive up to Harlem and
I'll take her along."

Hanny almost danced for joy. Margaret found her red merino coat. The
collar was trim