r of a moral obligation was a strong notion of duty, which had
descended to her from her Puritan ancestors. There was one thing left
to do.

"Do you know Chardon Street?" she asked.

The child nodded.

There was a flower shop on the corner. She led the child across to it,
entered, and asked for an envelope. She wrote a few lines on a card,
enclosed it and sealed the envelope. Then she went out to the
side-walk again with the child. Stooping over her she made sure that
the little one really did know the street. "It isn't far from here,"
she said. "Give that to any one there, and somebody will go right home
with you to see your mother, to warm you, you poor little mite, and
feed you, and make you quite happy."

She did not explain, and the child would not have understood, that she
vouched for a special donation for the case as a sort of commemorative
gift. The sum was large--it was a quixotic sort of salve to a sick
conscience which told her that she ought to go herself.

The child, still sobbing, turned away, and drearily started up the
hill. She did not go far, however. Miss Moreland had her misgivings on
that point. And, just as she was about to draw a breath of relief,
convinced that, after all, she would go, the girl stopped deliberately
in the shadow of a tree, and sat down on the snow-covered curbstone.

No need to ask what the trouble was. The poor are born with a horror
of organized charity. It obliges them to be looked over in all their
misery; it presumes a worthiness, or its pretence, which they resent
almost as much as they do the intrusion of the visiting committee.
This disinclination is as old as poverty, and is the rock ahead of all
organized charity. Its exemplification was very trying to Miss
Moreland at that moment, and the crouching figure was exasperating.

She pursued the child. She pulled her rather roughly to her feet. It
was so provoking to have her sit down in the cold, and to so personify
all that she wanted so ardently,--it was purely selfish, she knew
that,--to put out of her mind. There seemed but one thing to do: go
with the child.

She knew that if she did not, she would not sleep that night, nor
smile the next day--and that seemed so unfair to others. Besides, it
was not yet so very late.

Bidding the child hurry, she followed her up the hill, and down the
other side to a part of the city with which she was not familiar.

The child cried quietly all the way.

Miss Moreland w