“What kind o’ baskets were they?” asked Lizzie, suddenly sitting up with a new air of attention.

“Oh, ho!” laughed one of the girls; “Lizzie wants to hang a basket for somebody she knows!”

“Hush up!” said Lizzie, turning rather red.  Then, addressing Becky again:  “Did the lady who was telling about ’em have a basket with her?  Did you see it?”

“No, but she hed a piece o’ that pretty wrinkly paper jes’ like the lamp-shades in the winders, and she said the baskets was made o’ that, and she was buyin’ some ribbon to match for handles and bows.”

“Oh, I wish I could see one of ’em,” said Lizzie.

“I went to a kinnergarden school wonst when I was a little kid,” struck in Becky here, “and we was put up there to makin’ baskets out o’ paper.”

“Could you do it now?” asked Lizzie, eagerly.

“Mebbe I could,” answered Becky, warily; “but it’s a good bit ago.”

“When you were young,” cried one of the company with a giggle.

“Yes, when I was young,” repeated Becky, in exact imitation of the speaker, whose voice was very flat and nasal.

Everybody laughed, and one of the girls cried:  “Becky’ll get the best of you any time.”  They were all of them impressed with this fact, when, a few minutes after, the wary Becky agreed to show Lizzie what she knew of “kinnergarden” basket-making, if Lizzie would agree to pay her for her trouble by giving her materials enough to make a basket for herself.

“Ain’t she a sharp one?” commented one of the girls to another when they had left the lunch-room.

“Ain’t she, though?  She’ll get what she can, and hold on to what she’s got every time.”

“But she’s awful good fun.  Didn’t she take off Matty Kelley’s flat nose-y way of talkin’ to a T?”

“Didn’t she!” and the two girls laughed anew at the recollection.

CHAPTER II.

Becky was the only one of the parcel-girls who was in the lunch-room when this talk about May-day took place.  The others lived nearer to the store, and had gone home to their dinners.  They were all a trifle older than Becky, and a good deal larger.  For these reasons, as well as for the fact that they had been in the establishment quite a while when Becky entered it, they had put on a great many disagreeable airs toward the pale-faced little girl when she first appeared, and attempted, as Becky put it, to “boss” her.  They soon found, however, that the new-comer was too much for them.  They expected her to be afraid of them,—­to “stand round” for them.  But Miss Becky was not in the least afraid of them, or, for that matter, of anybody; and as soon as she understood what they meant, she turned upon them the whole force of that inimitable mimicry of hers, and “took off” their airs in a manner that soon set the small army of salesmen and saleswomen into such fits of laughter that the tables