ook away," gasped Huldah faintly. "Where?"

"He's got three years. Didn't you know? And I'm left to keep
myself, and I can't do it. I'll never live till he comes out, I
know. I've sold the van and everything. I couldn't go round with it
by meself, but the man that had it off me cheated me something crool.
When Tom knows he'll--he'll--oh he'll be mad with me--"

"And Charlie?" asked Huldah, anxiously.

"Charlie! Oh, he's dead. He dropped down in the road one day.
'Twas lucky I'd sold him, wasn't it? He died only two days after."

Tears sprang to Huldah's eyes. "Oh, Charlie, poor dear old Charlie!"
she cried, "and--and I never said good-bye to him, or anything!"

"He's best off," said Emma Smith, coldly. "I wouldn't have been
sorry if I'd dropped down dead, too."

Huldah gasped.

"I can't get anything to do. I've tried to sell laces and buttons,
and cotton, but nobody don't seem to want any,--leastways not of me,"
and neither of her listeners wondered, when they looked at her, so
dirty, so untidy, so forbidding in appearance.

"I couldn't earn enough to get food or a bed, leave alone buy a new
stock."

Huldah wondered why she had come. Was it only to beg? In another
moment she knew.

"I came to see if you couldn't 'elp me a bit. You've got good
friends and a comfortable home, and plenty to eat and drink.
You surely wouldn't let me go starving--me that brought you up, and
did everything for you."

"Everything!" Huldah's thoughts flew back over her life, from the
time her mother died until she made her escape, a year ago, and
wondered what was meant by "everything."

"I know as you can make a good bit by your baskets, and it don't seem
fair that strangers should have it all, do it?"

"Strangers don't have it all," said Huldah, warmly. "Even my best
friends don't. I have what I earn, to buy what I like with.
I buy my own clothes, and I give Mrs. Perry a little for keeping
me--"

"Oh! a pretty fine thing that! Why, she ought to be paying you wages
for being a little galley-slave to her, and doing all her work!"

"I don't!" cried Huldah, indignantly. "I don't work nearly as hard
as I did for you, when I never had a penny of my own, not even from
what my baskets made."

In a moment, though, she was sorry she had lost her temper.
Mrs. Perry, standing at her door watching them, looked so frightened
when their words rose high, and Emma Smith herself looked so weary
and miserable one could n