mewhat
disrespectful, reply; and, dropping some pennies, he seized his treasure
and was off again.

Gerty's eager fingers soon held the pie, which Dick dexterously tossed
on the bed, and Dick's eyes fairly shone as he watched the half-starved
little one swallow the dainty in rapid mouthfuls.

"Oh, I never in all my life tasted anything half so good! Don't you want
some?" questioned the child, whose enjoyment was so keen she feared it
hardly could be right.

"No, indeed!"--this with hearty emphasis. "I've had 'em. I'm goin' now,"
he added, reluctantly, "but I'll come back again 'fore long."

"Oh, do!" said Gerty, "an' I'll sing you some more of 'Happy Land,' if
you want me; and I know another song, too. I learned them up to the
horspital when I was there. You see, I was peddlin' matches and
shoe-strings, and it was 'most dark and awful slippery, and the horses
hit me afore I knowed it; and then they picked me up, and I didn't know
nothin', and couldn't tell where I lived, and so they took me to the
horspital; and the next day I told 'em where mother was, and she came.
But the doctors said I had better stay, and p'r'aps they could help me.
But they couldn't, you know, cos the pain in my back was too bad. And
mother, she washes, and I watch the daylight, and wait for night, and
sing; and when the pain aint too bad, the day don't seem so very long."

"My eye!" was all Dick could say, as he beat a hasty retreat, rubbing
the much appealed-to member with a corner of his ragged coat.

"Well, them's hard lines, anyhow," he soliloquized, as he went to the
printing-office. "An' she's chipper, too. Game as anything," he went on
to himself. "Now, I'm just goin' to keep my eye on that little un, and
some o' my spare coppers'll help her, I guess."

How he worked that night! His papers fairly flew, he sold them so fast;
and when, under a friendly street-lamp, he counted his gains, a
prolonged whistle was his first comment.

"More'n any night this week," he pondered. "Did me good to go 'thout the
pie. Gerty'll have an orange to-morrow."

So, next morning, when the last journal had been sold, a fruit-stand was
grandly patronized.

"The biggest, best orange you got, and never mind what it costs." Then
but a few moments to reach Gerty's alley, and Gerty's window.

Yes, there she was, just the same as yesterday, and the pinched face
grew bright when she saw her new friend peering at her.

"Oh! you're come, are you?" joyfully.