l kindled to the interest of her story. Had not
something very thrilling happened in her simple life--a life the
greatest interest of which was to carry to the store each day the small
bundle of crocheted lace which her mother made. "She was a swell kid.
She played in the park, waitin' for a big man."

"Did she talk to you?" breathlessly.

Beryl avoided this question. The beautiful little girl had _not_ spoken
to her, though she had hung by very close, inviting an approach with
hungry eyes.

"She was just a little kid," loftily. Then, "Ain't the doll mine?"

Mrs. Lynch patted down the outermost garment. "Yes, it's yours it is,
darlin'. At least--" she hesitated over a fleeting sense of justice,
"maybe the little stranger will be a-coming back for her doll. It's a
fair bit of dolly and it's lonesome and weeping the little mother may be
this very minute--"

Beryl reached out eager arms.

"It's an orphan doll. I'll love it _hard_. Give me it. Oh," with a
breath that was like a whistle. "_Ain't_ she lovely? Mom, is she _too_
lovely for us?"

The timid question brought a quick change in the mother's face, a
kindling of a fire within the mother breast. She straightened her
slender body.

"And if there's anything too good for my girlie I'd like to see it!
Isn't this the land where all men are equal and my girl and boy shall
have a school as good as the best and grow up to be maybe the President
himself?" She repeated the words softly as though they made a creed,
learned carefully and with supreme faith. Why had she come, indeed, to
this crowded, noisy city from her fair home meadows if not for this
promise it held out to her?

"And isn't your brother the head of his class?" she finished
triumphantly. "And it's smarter than ever you'll be yourself with your
little books. Oh, childy!" She caught the little girl, doll and all,
into an impulsive embrace.

From it Beryl wriggled to a practical curiosity as to supper. She
sniffed. Her mother nodded.

"Stew! And with _dumplin's_--" She made it sound like fairy food. "Ready
to the beating when your father comes."

"Where's Dale? And Pop?"

"It's Dale's night at the store. And Pop'll be comin' along any minute.
I've set the lamp for him."

"I'm hungry," Beryl complained. She sat down cross-legged on the
spotless scrap of carpeting and proceeded with infinite tenderness to
disrobe the doll.

"Do you think she will like it here?" she asked suddenly, looking about
th