s & Co.]

When first the young lady from the College Settlement dragged Ardelia
from her degradation, she was sitting on a dirty pavement and throwing
assorted refuse at an unconscious policeman.

"Come here, little girl," said the young lady, invitingly. "Wouldn't
you like to come with me and have a nice, cool bath?"

"Naw," said Ardelia, in tones rivaling the bath in coolness.

"You wouldn't? Well, wouldn't you like some bread and butter and jam?"

"Wha's jam?"

"Why, it's--er--marmalade. All sweet, you know."

"Naw!"

"I thought you might like to go on a picnic," said the young lady,
helplessly. "I thought all little girls liked--"

"Picnic? When?" cried Ardelia, moved instantly to interest. "I'm goin'!
Is it the Dago picnic?"

The young lady shuddered, and seizing the hand which she imagined to
have had the least to do with the refuse, she led Ardelia away--the
first stage of her journey to Arcady.

Later arrayed in starched and creaking garments which had been made for
a slightly smaller child, Ardelia was transported to the station, and
for the first time introduced to a railroad car. She sat stiffly on the
red plush seat while the young lady talked reassuringly of daisies and
cows and green grass. As Ardelia had never seen any of these things, it
is hardly surprising that she was somewhat unenthusiastic.

"You can roll in the daisies, my dear, and pick all you want--all!" she
urged eagerly.

"Aw right," she answered, guardedly.

The swelteringly hot day, and the rapid unaccustomed motion combined to
afflict her with a strange internal anticipation of future woe. Once
last summer, when she ate the liquid dregs of the ice-cream man's great
tin, and fell asleep in the room where her mother was frying onions, she
had experienced this same foreboding, and the climax of that dreadful
day lingered yet in her memory.

At last they stopped. The young lady seized her hand, and led her
through the narrow aisle, down the steep steps, across the little
country station platform, and Ardelia was in Arcady.

A bare-legged boy in blue overalls and a wide straw hat then drove them
many miles along a hot, dusty road, that wound endlessly through the
parched country fields. Finally they turned into a driveway, and drew up
before a gray wooden house. A spare, dark-eyed woman in a checked apron
advanced to meet them.

"Terrible hot to-day, ain't it?" she sighed. "I'm real glad to see you,
Miss Forsythe. Won't y