“Yes,” answered Lizzie.  Something in Lizzie’s expression, in her tone, roused Becky’s wandering memory, and with a sudden flash of her old mischief she said,—­

“He’s a fren’ o’ mine.  Show up, Tim, and lemme interduce yer.”

There was a movement on the other side of the table where Becky lay; and then Lizzie saw, struggling up from a chair, a tiny crippled body, wasted and shrunken,—­the body of a child of seven with a shapely head and the face of an intelligent boy of fifteen.

“That’s him,—­that’s Tim,—­the fightin’ gen’leman I tole yer ’bout,” said Becky, with a gay little smile at the remembrance of her joke and how she “played it on ’em,” and at the look of astonishment now on Lizzie’s face.  And still with the gay little smile, but fainter voice,—­

“Yer’ll tell ’em, Lizzie,—­the girls in the store,—­how I played it on ’em; and when I git back—­I’ll—­”

“Give her some air; she’s faint,” cried one of the women.

The tall young rough, Jake, sprang to the window and pulled it open, letting in a fresh wind that blew straight up from the grassy banks beyond the Cove.

“Do yer feel better, Becky?” he asked, as he saw her face brighten.

“I—­I feel fus’ rate—­all well, Jake, and—­I—­I smell the Mayflowers.  They warn’t burnt, were they?  And oh, ain’t they jolly, ain’t they jolly!  Tim, Tim!”

“Yes, yes, Becky,” answered Tim, in a shaking voice.

“Wait for me here Tim,—­I—­I’m goin’ to find ’em for yer, Tim,—­ther, ther Mayflowers.  They’re close by; don’t yer smell ’em?  Close by—­I’m goin’—­to find ’em for yer, Tim!” And with a radiant smile of anticipation Becky’s soul went out upon its happy quest, leaving behind her the grime and poverty of Cove Street forever.

The two women—­and one of them was Becky’s aunt with whom the girl had always lived—­broke into sobs and tears; but as the latter looked at the radiant face, she said suddenly,—­

“She’s well out of it all.”

“But there’s them that’ll be worse for her goin’,” said the other; “and ‘t ain’t only Tim I mean, it’s the like o’ him,” nodding towards Jake, who was slipping quietly out of the room,—­“it’s the like o’ him.  They looked up to her, they did,—­bit of a thing as she was.  She was that straight and plucky and gin’rous she did ’em good; she made ’em better.  Jake’s often said she was the Cove Street mascot.”

And with these words sounding in her ears, Lizzie crept softly from the room.  Just over the threshold, in the shadow of the broken bits of furniture that had been saved from the fire, she started to see Matty and Josie still waiting for her.

“What!” she cried, “have you been here all the time—­have you seen—­have you heard—­”

They nodded; and Matty whispered brokenly,—­

“Oh, Lizzie, I ain’t never again goin’ to think bad things of anybody I don’t know.”

“Nor I, nor I,” said Josie, huskily.