much of this little domestic disagreement as I
cared to hear.

"Wait a minute," I said. "What is all this? Who has been here to see
Mother?"

Both answered at once.

"That Colton girl," cried Lute.

"That Mabel Colton," said Dorinda.

"Miss Colton? She has been here? this afternoon."

"Um-hm," Dorinda nodded emphatically. "She stayed in your ma's room
'most an hour."

"'Twas fifty-three minutes," declared Lute. "I timed her by the clock.
And she fetched a great, big bouquet. Comfort says she--"

I waited to hear no more, but went into Mother's room. The little bed
chamber was fragrant with the perfume of flowers. A cluster of big
Jacqueminot roses drooped their velvety petaled heads over the sides
of the blue and white pitcher on the bureau. Mother loved flowers and
I frequently brought her the old fashioned posies from Dorinda's little
garden or wild blossoms from the woods and fields. But roses such as
these were beyond my reach now-a-days. They grew in greenhouses, not in
the gardens of country people.

Mother did not move as I entered and I thought she was asleep. But as I
bent over the roses she turned on the pillow and spoke.

"Aren't they beautiful, Roscoe?" she said.

"Yes," I answered. "They are beautiful."

"Do you know who brought them to me?"

"Yes, Mother. Lute told me."

"She did call, you see. She kept her word. It was kind of her, wasn't
it?"

I sat down in the rocking chair by the window.

"Well," I asked, after a moment, "what did she say? Did she condescend
to pity her pauper neighbors?"

"Roscoe!"

"Did she express horrified sympathy and offer to call your case to the
attention of her cousin in charge of the Poor Ward in the City General
Hospital, like that woman from the Harniss hotel last summer?"

"Boy! How can you!"

"Oh, well; I am a jealous beast, Mother; I admit it. But I have not been
able to bring you flowers like that and it galls me to think that others
can. They don't deserve to have all the beautiful things in life, while
the rest of us have none."

"But it isn't her fault that she has them, is it? And it was kind to
share them with us."

"I suppose so. Well, what did she say to you? Dorinda says she was with
you nearly an hour. What did you and she talk about? She did not offer
charity, did she?"

"Do you think I should have accepted it, if she had? Roscoe, I have
never seen you so prejudiced as you are against our new neighbors. It
doesn't seem like yo