he words."

Mrs. Warren planted down before Connie the well-known words of "Home,
Sweet Home."

"I know this without learning it," said the girl.

"An' you 'as a good woice, I take it."

"Middlin'," replied Connie.

"Wull, sing it for me now."

Connie struck up the familiar words, and so frightened was she that in
real desperation she acquitted herself fairly well.

"You'll take a treble, an' the little boy 'ull do likewise, and I'll
take a fine, deep second. Ah! _I_ know 'ow to sing," said Mrs. Warren.

"You won't take little Ronald out on a dreadful sort o' day like this,"
said Connie.

"Wen I want yer adwice I'll ax fur it," said Mrs. Warren, with most
withering sarcasm.

Poor Connie felt her heart suddenly fit to burst. What new and dreadful
departure was this? Mrs. Warren now brought Ronald into the front room,
and there she arrayed him in garments of the poorest type, allowing his
little thin legs to be quite bare, and his very thin arms to show
through his ragged jacket. She posed, however, a little red cap on the
midst of his curly dark hair; and this cap most wonderfully became the
child, so that few people could pass him in the street without noticing
the sweetness of his angelic face. Then Mrs. Warren prepared herself for
the part she was to take. She went into her bedroom for the purpose, and
returned looking so exactly like a stout old beggar woman that the
children would scarcely have known her. She had covered her left eye
with a patch, and now only looked out on the world with her right one.
Her hair was knotted untidily under a frowsy old bonnet, and a very thin
shawl was bound across her ample breast.

"We'll do fine, I take it," she said to the children. "I am your mother,
my dears; you'll both 'old me by the 'and. Purtier little lambs couldn't
be seen than the two of yez. And ef poor, ugly Mammy Warren 'ave made
herself still uglier for yer sweet sakes, 'oo can but love 'er for the
ennoblin' deed? Wull, come along now, children; but first I'll build up
the fire, for we'll be 'ungry arter this 'ere job."

The fire was built up to Mrs. Warren's satisfaction, and the three went
downstairs. Ronald was quite speechless with shame--to go out like this,
to disgrace his brave father and his darling mother in this sort of
fashion, was pure torture to the boy; but Connie, in the thought of him
and the fear that he would take cold, almost forgot her own misery.

The three did not go anywhere by