of the boys, to a little girl who stood on one
side, and seemed to shrink from joining them.

"Oh, never mind _her!_" said Ned, with a little toss of his head, "she's
nobody, anyhow. Her father drinks."

A quick flush crept over the child's pale face as she heard the cruel,
thoughtless words.

She was very sensitive, and the arrow had touched her heart in its
tenderest place.

Her father _was_ a drunkard, she knew, but to be taunted with it before
so many was more than she could bear; and with great sobs heaving her
bosom, and hot tears filling her eyes, she turned and ran away from the
play-ground.

Her mother was sitting by the window when she reached home, and the
tearful face of the little girl told that something had happened to
disturb her.

"What is the matter, Susie?" she asked, kindly.

[Illustration: "_He said that father drinks._"]

"Oh, mother," said Susie, with the tears dropping down her cheeks, as
she hid her face in her mother's lap, "Ned Graham said such a cruel
thing about me," and here the sobs choked her voice so that she could
hardly speak; "He said that I wasn't anybody, and that father drinks."

"My poor little girl," Mrs. Ellet said, very sadly. There were tears in
her eyes, too. Such taunts as this were nothing new in that family.

"Oh, mother," Susie said, as she lifted her face, wet with tears, from
her mother's lap, "I can't bear to have them say so, and act just as if
_I_ had done something wicked. I wish father wouldn't drink! Do you
suppose he'll ever leave it off?"

"I hope so," Mrs. Ellet answered, as she kissed Susie's face where the
tears clung like drops of dew on a rose. "I pray that he may break off
the habit, and I can do nothing but pray, and leave the rest to God."

That night Mr. Ellet came home to supper, as usual. He was a
hard-working man, and a good neighbor. So everybody said, but he had the
habit of intemperance so firmly fixed upon him that everybody thought he
would end his days in the drunkard's grave. Susie kissed him when he
came through the gate, as she always did, but there was something in her
face that went to his heart. A look so sad, and full of touching sorrow
for one so young as she!

"What ails my little girl?" he asked as he patted her curly head.

"I can't tell you, father," she answered, slowly.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because it would make you feel bad," Susie replied.

"I guess not," he said, as they walked up to the door together. "What