ether, we have been nearly starving many a
time. At last, though, Harry has got a good job offered him in a
gentleman's racing stables. It is a fine berth to have got, the
wages is good, and there are rooms to live in, and we can't refuse it
after all we have been through, but they won't allow no children.

"If work hadn't been so hard to get, and we starving, we would have
waited for something else, for it nearly kills me to part with my
Jessie, but I've got to, and, dear father and mother, I hope you will
forgive me, but I am sending her to you. She is all I've got, and I
am nearly crazy at losing her, but I don't know what else to do.
Life is very hard sometimes. I know you will be good to her, and you
can't help loving her, I know. She is very good and quiet, and she
will not give mother very much trouble, and I pray with all my heart
she may be a better child, and more of a comfort to you than I have
ever been.

"Your broken-hearted but loving,

"Lizzie.

"P.S.--She is five years old and strong and healthy. I had her
christened Jessamine May to remind me of the jessamine and the
May-trees at home, for I love my old home dearer than any place in
the world. Forgive me, dear father and mother, and be good to my
precious darling."

For minutes after he had reached the end of the letter, poor Thomas
Dawson sat with tears running fast over his weather-worn cheeks.
"My little maid," he kept saying to himself, with a sob in his
breath, "my Lizzie starving! starving! and me with a plenty and to
spare!" It was his own child he was thinking of, his own Lizzie, the
little maiden who had been the apple of his eye, the joy and pride of
his life--and this was what she had come to!

The kettle sang and boiled on the hob, the fire burnt clear, but the
loaf lay on the table uncut, and still the old man sat staring before
him at the letter spread on the table, heeding nothing until a
thought came which roused him completely--though only to a deeper
sense of trouble. "However am I going to break the news to mother,"
he groaned. "Oh, my! but it'll upset her something cruel--and that
lazy, good-for-nothing fellow that she could never abide, have
brought it all upon us!"

His thoughts and his wonderings, though, were brought to a sudden
stop by the touch of a hand on his shoulder. "Why, Thomas, you were
so quiet I thought you must be asleep, or ill, or something, and I
was so worried I had to get up at last and come