nd the others took it
up. They never saw the old fellow without shouting to a sing-song tune
that they had made themselves:

"Paddy on the Turnpike
Couldn't count eleven,
Put him on a leather bed,
Thought he was in Heaven."

CHAPTER III.

PADDY AND PEGGY

Not seeming to hear the children, the old man used to work in silence,
gathering the bottles and rags and things and putting them in his bag.
Once a week he sold all he had found and brought the money home to his
wife.

Now Paddy and his wife lived in a little cottage on the far side of the
common. And Paddy's wife was always sick. The poor woman had had a
terrible accident in which she had been so badly crushed and twisted
that she was never free from pain a single moment.

Paddy would rise early in the morning, and, before he left to go to his
work, he would put her in her chair by the window so that she could look
out on the common, and here she sat knitting socks all day long.

She did not know many people, so she was much alone. None of the
neighbours in Jefferson Square were aware that such a person as
Mrs. Paddy existed, though they might have seen her, if they had
taken the trouble, every time they looked out of a front window;
for she lived in plain view of all the dwellings on the Square.

But though none of the "well-bred" people ever knew of Mrs. Paddy's
existence, sometimes the mother of the little outcasts who were too
common to be the associates of fine ladies would drop in "to straighten
things up a bit."

"Well, Mrs. Myer," she would say, "the top of the mornin' to ye. It's to
market I've just been and the butcher sent ye a posy," and she would put
a gay flower or two in the blue glass vase that stood on the sick
woman's window-sill.

Or maybe one of the little outcasts would bring a bowl of steaming soup.
"Mother thought you might like something to warm you up inside," the
child would say, and Mrs. Paddy, unknown and unknowing of the fine
world, would kiss and thank her with a smile that she must have learned
from the angels.

But no other soul ever visited Mrs. Paddy, and knitting at her window,
she led a solitary life indeed.

[Illustration]

And the whole heart of Mrs. Paddy was bound up in Paddy, strange as that
may seem. But, you must know, Paddy was a very different sort of a
person from what the children imagined him. No matter what she was
suffering, Mrs. Paddy had always a bright look for him