th resentment.

"There is nothing here for you," rasped the latter, retaining her hold
upon the folded parcel as she advanced to the curb and glanced up and
down the street.

The child, who had unconsciously carried her rag-picker's hook, stood
waiting in the middle of the road.

"Don't you hear me?" repeated the woman, threateningly. "Be off with
you!"

"It is a public road," said the little one.

"You beggar----"

"I haven't asked you for anything, madame," interrupted the child,
with quivering voice,--"I'd die before asking you for anything,--but I
have as much right to the road as you."

There was a flash of defiance in the small blue eyes now.

Two street dogs came up on a run. The woman threw down her parcel to
them and, retreating, slammed the iron gate after her.

With a wicked swing of her hook the child drove the dogs away and
hastily inspected the garbage. A piece of stale crust and some
half-decayed fruit rewarded her. A gristled end of beef she threw to
the dogs, that watched her wistfully a few yards away.

"Voila! I divide fair, messieurs," said she, skilfully munching the
sound spots out of the fruit and casting the rest on the ground.

"One would have thought madame was about to spread a banquet," she
muttered.

She sauntered away, stopping to break the crust with a piece of loose
paving, with a sharp eye out for other windfalls.

A young girl saw her from a garden, and shyly peeped through the high
wrought-iron fence at the little savage.

Though the latter never stopped a second in her process of
mastication, she eyed the other quite as curiously,--something as she
might have regarded a strange but beautiful animal through the bars of
its cage.

In experience and practical knowledge of life the respective ages of
these two might have been reversed; the child of the street been
sixteen instead of twelve.

Undersized, thin, sallow, and sunburned,--bareheaded, barefooted,
dirty, and ragged,--she formed a striking contrast to the
rosy-cheeked, plump, full-lipped, and well-dressed young woman within.

The extraordinary sound of crunching very naturally attracted the
first attention of the elder.

"What in the world is that which you are eating, child?" she asked.

"Bread, ma'm'selle."

"Bread! Why, it's covered with dirt!"

"Yes, ma'm'selle."

Redoubled exertion of the sound young teeth.

"Why do you eat that?"

"Hungry, ma'm'selle."

"Heavens!"

Continuous crunching, w