gainst his cheek, answering, in a broken voice, "Leave
you, deary? Not while I live. Not while you will stay with the old blind
man, who can't even see to what sort of a home he has brought his pet."

"Why, to the nicest home ever was. Can't be a nicer nowhere, not any
single where. Not even on that big avenue where such shiny people as him
live. Why, we've got a hull house to ourselves, haven't we?"

"Child, stop. Tell me exact, as you never told before. Is Elbow Lane a
'slum'?"

"'Deed I don't know, 'cause I never heard tell of a 'slum' 'fore. It's
the cutest little street ever was. Why, you can 'most reach acrost from
one side to the other. Me an' Billy has often tried. It's got the
loveliest crook in it, right here where we be; an' one side runs out one
way an' t'other toward the river. Why, grandpa, Posy Jane says
onct--onct, 'fore anybody here was livin', the Lane was a cow-path an'
the cows was drove down it to the river to drink. Maybe she's lyin'.
'Seems if she must be, 'cause now there ain't no cows nor nothin' but
milk-carts an' cans in corner stores, an' buildin's where onct she says
was grass--grass, grandpa, do you hear?"

"Yes, I hear, mate. But the folks, the neighbors. A slum, deary, I guess
a slum is only where wicked people live. I don't know, really, for we
had no such places on the broad high sea. Are our folks in the Lane
wicked, daughter?"

"Grandpa!" she cried, indignantly. "When there's such a good, good
woman, Jane's sister Meg-Laundress, what washes for us just 'cause I
mend her things. An' tailor-Jake who showed me to do a buttonhole an'
him all doubled up with coughin'; an' Billy Buttons who gives us a paper
sometimes, only neither of us can read it; an' Nick, the parson, who
helps me sort my goobers; an' Posy Jane, that's a kind o' mother to
everybody goin'. Don't the hull kerboodle of 'em treat you like you was
a prince in a storybook, as I've heard Billy tell about? Huh! Nice
folks? I should think they was. Couldn't be any nicer in the hull city.
Couldn't, for sure, an' I say so, I, Glory Beck."

"And all very poor, mate, terrible, desperate poor; an' ragged an' dirty
an' swearers, an' not fit for my pet to mix with. Never go to church nor
Sunday-school, nor----Eh, little mate?" persisted the old man,
determined to get at the facts of the case at last.

Glory was troubled. In what words could she best defend her friends and
convince her strangely anxious guardian that Elbow folks w