now."

"Come, back nothin'. I'm goin' home."

"Why--why, Ardelia! Don't you really like it?"

"Naw, it's too hot."

Miss Forsythe stared.

"But Ardelia, you don't want to go back to that horribly smelly street?
Not truly?"

"Betcher life I do!"

"It's so lonely and quiet," pleaded the young lady. Ardelia shuddered.
Again she seemed to hear that fiendish, mournful wailing:

"Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!"

They rode in silence. But the jar and jolt of the engine made music in
Ardelia's ears; the familiar jargon of the newsboy:

"N' Yawk evening paypers! Woyld! Joynal!" was a breath from home to her
little cockney heart.

They pushed through the great station, they climbed the steps of the
elevated track, they jingled on a cross-town car. And at a familiar
corner Ardelia slipped loose her hand, uttered a grunt of joy, and Miss
Forsythe looked after her in vain. She was gone.

But late in the evening, when the great city turned out to breathe, and
sat with opened shirt and loosened bodice on the dirty steps; when the
hurdy-gurdy executed brassy scales and the lights flared in endless
sparkling rows; when the trolley gongs at the corner pierced the air,
and feet tapped cheerfully down the cool stone steps of the beer-shop,
Ardelia, bare-footed and abandoned, nibbling at a section of bologna
sausage, cake-walked insolently with a band of little girls behind a
severe policeman, mocking his stolid gait, to the delight of Old Dutchy,
who beamed approvingly at her prancing.

"Ja, ja, you trow out your feet good. Some day we pay to see you, no?
You like to get back already!"

"Ja, danky slum, Dutchy," she said airily, as she sank upon her cool
step, stretched her toes and sighed:

"Gee! N' Yawk's the place!"

[E] Copyright, 1902, by McClure, Phillips & Co.

Meriel

BY MARGARET HOUSTON.

(From _Ainslee's Magazine_.)

"Let go my hand!" (A start of quick surprise.)
"How could you dare?" (A flash of angry eyes.)
And yet her hand in mine all passive lies.

"How rude you are!" (The rose-blush fully blown.)
"I trusted you!" ('Twould melt a heart of stone.)
And yet the little hand rests in mine own!

Oh, dainty Meriel--little April day!
However warmly pouting lips cry Nay,
That little hand shall rest in mine--alway!

The Old Man and "Shep"

(A true story.)

BY JOHN G. SCORER.

It was on the morning of the second day of the new year. The mercury
hovered a few de