y the usual flight of
stained and shabby steps, its doorway showing a set of some dozen
letter-boxes, and looking down upon a basement entrance frequently
embellished with ash-cans and milk-bottles, and, just at present, with
banks of soiled and sooty snow. The Sheridans climbed three long flights
inside, to their own rooms, but as this gained them a glimpse of river,
and a sense in summer of airiness and height, to say nothing of pleasant
nearness to the roof, they rarely complained of the stairs--in fact,
rarely thought of them at all.

With the opening of their own door, however, all likeness to their
neighbours ceased. Even in a class where home ties and home comforts are
far more common than is generally suspected, Kate Sheridan was
exceptional, and her young persons fortunate among their kind. Her
training had been, she used to tell them, "old country" training, but it
was not only in fresh linen and hot, good food that their advantage lay.
It was in the great heart that held family love a divine gift, that had
stood between them and life's cold realities for some twenty courageous
years. Kate idolized her own two children and her foster-child with a
passion that is the purest and the strongest in the world. In possessing
them, she thought herself the most blessed of women. To keep a roof over
their heads, to watch them progress triumphantly through long division
and measles and skates, to see milk glasses emptied and plates scraped,
to realize that Wolf was as strong morally as he was physically, and
that all her teachers called Rose an angel, to spoil and adore the
beautiful, mischievous, and amusing "Baby"; this made a life full to the
brim, for Kate, of pride and happiness. Kate had never had a servant,
or a fur coat; for long intervals she had not had a night's unbroken
rest; and there had been times, when Wolf's fractured arm necessitated a
doctor's bill, or when coal for the little Detroit house had made a
disproportionate hole in her bank account, in which even the thrifty
Kate had known biting financial worry.

But the children never knew it. They knew only her law of service and
love. They must love each other, whatever happened. There was no
quarrelling at meals at Kate's house. Rose must of course oblige her
brother, sew on the button, or take his book to the library; Wolf must
always protect the girls, and consider them. Wolf firmly believed his
sister and cousin to be the sweetest girls in the world