nue, the corner house with
sixteen rooms and a garden and side yard, and----"

Miss Armacost was also upon her feet once more and had regained her
self-possession. After one hasty glance around, she had satisfied
herself that her mishap had not been observed by "the neighbors,"
and her dignity had promptly returned.

"Whoever I may be, you are certainly the girl who asks questions!" she
returned, rather crisply.

"Yes'm, I reckon I am. I'm Molly Johns. I live on Side Street. My
house is the one runs right back of your garden. That's the way I
knew you. I often see you out around, pottering."

"Oh! you do, do you? You are a very observing young person--at the
wrong times."

Molly opened her big gray eyes to their widest.

The little old lady was as odd as she looked, after all. Then she
reflected that when people spoke in that tone of voice they were
usually suffering in some manner. It was the very sound Father Johns'
speech had, whenever he came home from an especially hard day's toil
and his rheumatism bothered him. She again slipped her strong arm
about Miss Lucy's waist and remarked, anxiously:

"I do believe I did hurt you badly! Please lean on me and I'll help
you home in a jiffy. Then some of your 'girls' will take care of you."

By "girls" Molly meant servants, of which there were at least three in
the big corner house.

"Very well. The sooner we bring this episode to an end the better
pleased I shall be," answered the other. In reality, she had been more
touched than she herself quite understood by the frank commiseration
in Molly's eyes, and she could not remember when anybody had clasped
her body so affectionately. The sensation it gave her was an odd one;
else a person so eminently correct and punctilious as Miss Armacost
would never have walked the whole length of the finest block on the
Avenue, and in full sight of her aristocratic neighbors' windows,
within the embrace of a girl from Side Street.

"But, my child, you should be more careful. You might have broken my
bones."

"Yes'm, I might; might-be's aren't half so bad as did-do's," returned
Molly airily, and again Miss Lucy flashed a penetrating glance into
the merry, freckled face.

But there was no disrespect manifest upon it, and the lady remarked:

"You seem a very cheerful person."

"Why, of course. Aren't you?"

"Sometimes. But how you hobble along on that one skate! Why in the
world don't you use two, or go without entirely?"